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America is a divided country. Congress is at a standstill trying to pass key legislation, the military is mired in a conflict in the Middle East, and the president just faced his third assassination attempt in two years. Increasingly everything seems partisan and divisive. Even pop culture feuds and sports rivalries can become markers for political tribalism. But, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on Tuesday, there was one thing that brought everyone together: the British monarchy.

King Charles III’s address to a joint meeting of Congress was the closest thing in a long time to a kumbaya moment on an ever more dysfunctional Capitol Hill. Members of both parties clapped at most of the same applause lines, laughed at most of the same well-scripted royal jokes, and—on a bipartisan basis—failed to resist the same temptation to use their phones to take photos and video of the visiting royalty.

Even by the standards of past British monarchs in Washington, this was a unifying moment. After all, when Queen Elizabeth II came to Capitol Hill in 1991, two dozen members boycotted, mostly in protest of the British presence in Northern Ireland. Three........

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