Oh, dear. Despite all the careful toadying required to grease the wheels of a prime minister hoping for a successful sit-down at the White House, this one is destined to remembered less for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s AUKUS and rare minerals triumphs than for the mortification of a former PM: Kevin Rudd.

It’s long been the way.

When the forced-smile picture opportunities and the back-slapping and the declarations of undying loyalty between the US and Australia are all but forgotten, some exquisitely awkward moment has come to define such events for a string of prime ministers.

Way back in 1969, in the midst of the spirit-sapping Vietnam War, prime minister John Gorton got carried away at an official White House dinner, gushing to president Richard Nixon that “whenever there is a j

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