KEY POINTS:
If anything could convince our malodorous republicans their insistence on abandoning the anachronism of monarchy is a feeble-minded folly and the chorus of fools, it should've been the expensive extravagance of this week's presidential inauguration in Washington.
Which isn't a criticism of the man who was so deservedly inaugurated. Not least because the merest hint of agnosticism in these pentecostal times would likely see one burnt at the stake. But it is possible to praise famous men and reject the indulgence accompanying their fame.
Remember, Tuesday's elevation cost the Presidential Inaugural Committee an estimated $40 million and others - police, the National Guard, security agencies, et al - about the same again.
And these overblown shindigs happen every four years!!!
At least we only have a coronation when some ruler dies or abdicates. Which doesn't happen very often. We certainly aren't whipping out the cheque book every 48 months. Nor are we writing cheques for sums close to US$100 million. Sure, there's the odd pipe band and paint for the coach and some Brasso for the crown, but that's it.
Moreover, we're not obliged to pay for Beyonce - or her husband, Jay-Z, either.
In anything resembling a sane world, the presence of such folk at a public event would automatically render it absurd. As would the attendance of aged codgers like Bono and Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Mariah Carey.
This awkward marriage of establishment and anti-establishment should embarrass both parties. Rockers aren't meant to fawn over presidents. If they were true to their Johnny Rotten roots, they'd be on the picket line, not the payroll.
Nor should presidents need Tinsel Town's endorsement. In a sane world, the support of some addled singer or narcissistic actor for a particular politician would be an instant kiss of death.
Alas no, or not in the republican world. At least monarchs have the decency to be dull and boring - which is what leaders should be, in all but the most desperate of circumstances.
Not that any of this featured large in the screeds of bilious hagiography churned out by journalists reporting the quasi-imperial anointment. There was little mention of the cost - although if Sarah Palin had been the beneficiary of such largesse, you can bet the talk would have been of little else.
Forty mill may not be Bernie Madoff territory but it's still other people's money and a lot to pay to celebrate someone getting a job.
And while this particular someone is clearly unique, we should still beware those gospel chorus journalists whose uncritical credulity makes mock of the scepticism their craft requires. This rush to anoint Barack H. Obama as a secular messiah ignores the fact that we've already seen a few of those, Adolf Hitler arguably being the most obvious.
Fortunately, there was also Winston Churchill - a man of greater character and restraint - to stem the Fuehrer's messianic crusade.
That isn't intended as a criticism of America's new President but rather as a caution to those who would make any politician a saviour. They haven't been and never will be because they can't be.
Rhetoric is fine and sugar-rush rhetoric the finest of all. Every politician offers us essentially meaningless phrases like "Change we can believe in" or, sillier still, "Yes, we can!" or even, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America".
Such statements mean whatever people want them to mean. And since they mean different things to different people then, eventually, inevitably, many will be disillusioned.
That will happen with Obama as it happened with Bush - who said much the same sort of thing eight years ago that the new President said on Tuesday.
But there is rhetoric and there is reality and seldom the twain shall meet. In the end, all presidents are trapped by the obligation of their office.
America is Rome. Understand that and you understand all you need to about its virtues and vices and the character and objectives of its presidency. The two empires differ only in this; uniquely and miraculously, America conquered the world through commerce, not conflict. Its legions were salesmen, not soldiers; its weapons Coke and the cinema, not swords and spears.
But having conquered the world, American presidents must do as the Emperors did. They must protect what they have won, through allegiances, alliances and force of arms.
Pax Romana and Pax Obama are two sides of the same imperial coin and no amount of Woodstock wittering will change that fact.
When the crazed rulers of Iran decide their people should stop chanting "Death to Obama" and actually make it happen, America's President will have a simple choice to make. He will either surrender or shoot. And he surely won't surrender.
Because he can't.
As we will learn, at some point. For the moment, our scribes seem preoccupied with what should be the least important thing of all, the colour of the President's skin.
There is beauty in the symbolism of Obama's victory but it shouldn't matter.
Competence, not race, should be the only measure of every politician. That and the fact that politicians will always be driven to compromise and equivocation. It's immaterial whether a leader is black or white or if they encourage others to see the world in black and white terms - the choices they make will always be grey.
