Howard's freedom medal
The outgoing US President George W Bush has already rewarded the former Australian prime minister, John Howard, with a sobriquet: "deputy sheriff". Now he has bestowed upon his friend and close ally America's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
I know I run the risk of repetition, for we revisited the Howard Years just before Christmas. But, as one writer has already noted, the White House ceremony where Tony Blair was also honoured did have the feel of a requiem for the end of an era, so I wanted to give you the chance for a final word on both Messrs Howard and Bush.
I guess Australian opinion on the subject will fit into three broad categories. We could call the first the "Latham School," after the former Labor leader Mark Latham who repeatedly used the term "arse-licker" to describe what he considered to be an overly intimate relationship between the American and Australian leaders. Clearly, there are many here who hated the idea of Aussie diggers serving in Iraq, and were infuriated that the Howard government echoed the climate-change scepticism of the Bush White House and who believed that John Howard did not do more to secure the release of David Hicks from Guantanamo Bay. To them, perhaps, the presidential medal of freedom is more a badge of personal and national shame.
Then there will be those in what might be called the "Downer School," after the former Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer. Like his boss, Mr Downer supported the Bush administration out of conviction and calculation. He not only thought it was right to back America from a moral and ideological perspective, but that it was politic - or geo-politic, I suppose - to do so. Members of this school could construct an argument that John Winston Howard is Australia's most significant and influential ever global player (I suppose you could also make a similarly strong case for Rupert Murdoch on that front), and that he would never have achieved this measure of international influence had it not been for his unrelenting support for George W Bush. The "Latham School" counter-argument would be, I suppose, that there's not much point having a seat at the table if all you bring to the discussion is a rubber-stamp.
Finally, I guess, there's what might be called the "Apec School," named after the diplomatic talking shop, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. This group might include people who probably think it's sensible to have a close and happy economic and security relationship with America but that Australia should also improve its relations with its Asian neighbours and that it should not be slavish in its support of Washington.
This is close to the kind of foreign policy that Kevin Rudd pursued in the final months of the Bush era, as was illustrated over the Christmas break when Canberra turned down a request from Washington to resettle 17 Chinese detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
An enormous amount of Australian energy has been focussed on winning medals and the international recognition they deliver. But is this a decoration that Australia would rather leave well alone?
I'm 
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