Meetings, and even lunches and dinners between American presidents and Australian leaders are not infrequent.

But a state dinner is an honour rarely conferred on our prime ministers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s reception on Thursday was only the seventh in the nearly 150 years the White House has held them.

It was the culmination of a trip whose aim was described by Justin Bassi, the head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, to “encourage President Biden to continue to show that the US can do multiple things at once”.

On Wednesday evening local time, Biden had plenty on his plate besides the sarsaparilla-braised short rib.

Last week, the President made a prime-time appeal to the American public about the need for more than $100 billion in national security funding for the war in Ukraine and the world’s emerging trouble spot: Israel.

It’s unclear if he can get that bill through a Congress that has recently been hostage to the whims of a small band of Trumpians and foreign policy isolationists, who recently voted to remove their Speaker for the first time in the history of the Republic.

A replacement Speaker, Mike Johnson (a Christian conservative whose slim record of legislative achievement includes a law making it harder for married couples to divorce), was elected only hours before waiters brought out the soup.

• Read more: Mike Johnson’s election as Speaker is a win for Trump and extremists

Australia, too, has much riding on its ability to hold together an unruly Congress, not least the passage of legislation enabling the $370 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine and technology-sharing pact and everything it might entail for the future of south-east Asia and the South Pacific.

Biden waved off the uncertainties posed by such divisions, not only in  Congress but his administration’s budget and attention span.

“A great deal of the history of our world will be written in the Indo-Pacific in the coming years,” he said.

“Australia and the United States must write that story together.”

China, which America sees as a “strategic competitor”, especially in our region, loomed large in pre-dinner speeches.

Albanese quoted WB Yeats in reference to a “long contest between democracy and authoritarianism”.

But he also acknowledged the realities of a world that is more complicated now than in 1981 when Ronald Reagan played host to Malcolm Fraser at the peak of the Cold War.

“We live in a world that keeps changing,” he said.

In a week, Albanese will travel to China to meet Xi Jinping, the first such visit by an Australian prime minister in seven years.

Mending fences in Beijing while keeping the American alliance in good repair has been Albanese’s central foreign policy challenge – and achievement.

Biden, too, is tentatively taking on a similar challenge.

Next month, Xi may make his first appearance on American soil in almost as long – at a conference attended by the Prime Minister. 

But state dinners reflect personal relationships, not just the state of the American alliance or global politics.

Jodie Haydon, Albanese’s partner, wore a gown by Australian designer Paolo Sebastian featuring kookaburras and wattle.

“We both did very well,” said Biden before they entered.

Albanese said the event posed a problem for future date nights.

“It’s all downhill from here, my darling,” he told Haydon.

Ultimate date night for the Prime Minister and partner Jodie Haydon. Photo: Getty

This week was the 10th meeting between Biden and Albanese.

The two are simpatico, perhaps beyond what could be usually expected of two leaders from the centre left of politics.

While vice president, satirists popularly celebrated Biden as a US version of a bogan, who would greet tour groups at the White House while washing his car shirtless on the South Lawn.

Albanese, who was photographed taking out the garbage in Ugg boots and a Newtown Jets jersey early in his prime ministership, also has a touch of the knockabout.

“Brace yourself for some talk of bromance,” predicted Dr Emma Shortis, an expert on Australian-US relations, before the trip began.

And so there was, but not only from the travelling press.

“We stand as close as we have ever been. And I think, after this week, closer than we have been,” Albanese said.

“I think we get each other.”