Though I've been doing my damnedest to avoid any involvement whatsoever in the ultimately useless debate over the size and scope of President Bush's inaugural festivities, this post by John Cole really does seem to require some sort of response:

If I hear one more Democrat say this inauguration is costing too much, I am going to blow a gasket. Eight years after Bill Clinton's 33 million dollar inaugural, 40 million is apparently too much.

Most annoying is the association between the tsunami, or this idiot's association of the inauguration expense with the fallacy of unarmored vehicles in Iraq. Private donors are paying for the inauguration, but this is nothing new- Democrats are always quick to tel people how to spend their money.

But, as Bob Herbert explains in today's NYT, it's not about the money. It's about the appallingly bad taste:

In January 1945, with World War II still raging, Franklin Roosevelt insisted on a low-key inauguration. Already gravely ill, he began his address by saying, "Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Vice President, my friends, you will understand and, I believe, agree with my wish that the form of this inauguration be simple and its words brief."

Times have changed. President Bush and his equally tone-deaf supporters spent the past few days partying hard while Americans, Iraqis and others continued to suffer and die in the Iraq conflagration. Nothing was too good for the princes and princesses of the new American plutocracy. Tens of millions of dollars were spent on fireworks, cocktail receptions, gala dinners and sumptuous balls.

President Bush sought and won reelection as a "wartime president," which -- given the fact that 9/11, and our response to it, did take place on his watch -- was perfectly appropriate, I think. As is his opponents' insistence that he now make some effort to govern like one.

POSTSCRIPT: The nature of the blogosphere is such that we often only refer to our opposite numbers when we think that they're wrong about something. So I'd like to take a moment to point out that the aforementioned John Cole is ofttimes right, as, for example, he clearly is here.