When George W Bush made his last visit to Australia as United States President, John Howard, with whom he a had a very close personal relationship, did not meet him at the airport.
It was early September 2007 and Bush, along with other regional leaders, had jetted into Sydney for the APEC summit.
Bush's foray into Iraq four years earlier, so willingly supported by Australia, had become the mess many predicted, and Bush was about as popular as boils.
Howard did not snub Bush. But with a federal election 10 weeks away and his own leadership in danger, Howard had domestic politics to consider.
Bush's arrival coincided with the presentation of the Dally M, the best and fairest award for the National Rugby League. Howard had been invited to present the medal. As he was hanging the gong around Jonathan Thurston's neck, Bush was being greeted by deputy prime minister Mark Vaile.
Bush had visited US troops in Iraq on his way to Sydney and Vaile asked him on the tarmac how things were going over there.
"We're kicking ass," said Bush. When reports of the exchange reached the US, there was uproar. No-one there believed it anymore.
The Bush-Howard friendship was as close as any that has ever existed between a US president and an Australian prime minister and it coincided with a very strong alliance with the US.
But as Bush's popularity soured, so too did public support for the US. Even the incarceration of David Hicks had turned into a mainstream political negative for the Howard government, so much so that a deal was hastily crunched to have Hicks plea to some confected offence and get him out of Guantanamo Bay before the federal election.
It was all a small but important reminder that if the Australian public does not like the US president then it will not readily support the federal government rushing to be at the beck and call of Washington, as it historically has.
This week's extraordinary treatment of Malcolm Turnbull by Donald Trump takes this to a whole new level.
And it also leaves more than a few people looking silly. Early in the week, critics fell over themselves in the rush to condemn Turnbull for failing to join the global backlash against Trump's executive order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Few stopped to think but it was obvious from Turnbull's cautious public comments about the national interest and so forth that any such criticism would have jeopardised the refugee deal he had reached with Barack Obama and browbeat Trump into agreeing to honour.
When Trump's full hostility to the deal – and Australia – was exposed by Thursday's Washington Post report, this became blindingly obvious.
Turnbull did the right thing this week. He stood up to a bully, put the national interest first and maintained his composure publicly. And as tenuous as it now may be, the US is still more likely than not to take some refugees from Manus Island and Nauru.
Turnbull argued that as one former businessman to another, a deal is a deal.
It may all be a shambles but Turnbull looks a lot better than Trump. Labor wised up and toed the line on Friday after belting Turnbull the day before. Bill Shorten and deputy Tanya Plibersek backed the home side this time.
"I am, as an Australian, a little offended by the treatment of Australia's Prime Minister and the leaking of a conversation that should have been a confidential conversation," said Plibersek.
"Australia has been an excellent ally of the United States, we have stood beside the United States in every conflict this century and last, including some of the ones that we shouldn't have been involved in, like the first invasion of Iraq."
Shorten said he had sympathy for the Prime Minister and that Trump needed to show Turnbull and Australia some respect.
A legion of boffins, diplomats and other pipe-smokers have spent the past 48-hours arguing while this is a blip in the relationship, it is strong enough and old enough to endure a numpty like Trump.
Others lecture that we have got it all wrong, that Trump has overturned the orthodoxy and those who continue to judge him using "old" metrics are doomed to fail.
But just because he has rejected convention and standards does not mean everyone else should abandon theirs.
It is believed within government that Trump's public posturing over the refugee deal is all about playing to his domestic audience which would, no doubt, be shocked to hear of the arrangement and be none too keen about it.
Sources said Trump needs his people to know that it is a deal he never would have done but which was left to him by Obama.
"That fact that Trump hasn't killed it is telling,'' said a source.
Still, Trump may down the track demand a pretty large favour in return.
For the next four years at least, or however long Trump endures, the US-Australia alliance and those involved in maintaining it will be walking on eggshells.
If Trump makes himself more unpopular here, it will make it very hard for Turnbull – already politically weakened – to heed requests from Washington.
This could range from taking on China by joining US freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, a request for more troops to the Middle-East to expanding the US military presence in northern Australia.
For those doubtful or sceptical about Australia's alliance with the US, even hostile towards it, Trump is a gift.
Bob Carr, who for some time has been urging a less obsequious approach towards Washington, told the 7.30 program on Thursday Trump's display was a good thing for the nation.
"Everyone supports the alliance in Australia, there's a consensus on that. I'm not advocating we move away from it. It's one of the pillars of Australian foreign policy, but it's not the be all and the end all of Australia's international character," he said.
"If this rude dismissal of the representations by an Australian prime minister's altogether legitimate representations by President Trump serves to remind Australians of that great truth, that's a very good and healthy thing."
Phillip Coorey is The Australian Financial Review's chief political correspondent.
