Let no one suppose the other faction chaste. The day before, Saturday, as Fox News relates, Barack Obama, who once held that same chair, addressed a rally in the public auditorium of Cleveland for Amy Acton, who seeks the governorship of Ohio, and for Sherrod Brown, candidate for the senate. What he said of laws, of the annona, of the frontier, the reports do not record; they record that ten days before the elections he lectured on furniture: that the president is devoted to home renovations and fit to appear on the television shows about doing up houses; that the White House glitters with so much gold you would think Saddam Hussein had opened a cheesecake restaurant.

Fox News, however, as diligent in mauling an opponent as ever, defends the works themselves: the Rose Garden, its lawn removed, has been paved in limestone so that there is space for speeches and banquets, the roses kept around the edges; a granite pad on which the president's helicopter lands was dedicated in September; a ballroom is being built so that great ceremonies need not always be held under tents. It adds that the monument Barack Obama is raising in Chicago has a granite-clad tower which detractors call the 'Obamalisk', and that its cost, according to the same outlet's earlier reports, has swollen past a billion dollars, when at first it was reckoned at three hundred and fifty million. All of this comes from a single workshop; I report it, I do not swear to it.

Look now at the candidate. Once, dressed in a chalk-white toga, he walked the Forum himself, grasped hands, learned the citizens' names from a slave whispering in his ear; he himself wished to be seen, he himself to be judged. Now, to win a seat in the senate, he sheltes in a singer's shadow, and is glad to be looked at while someone else is watched. Our ancestors held actors and mimes infamous, however rich, however adored, and would not trust them even with a vote; now the mime does not cast a vote but gathers votes. I, who am said to have been banished to Egypt once for laughing at an actor's influence at court, see the actor no longer merely in favour at court but indispensable at the polls. What Rogers thinks of taxes, of war, of debt, the reports do not say; what the chanteuse will sing is not known either. The crowd comes to see the chanteuse; the candidate it glances at in passing, like a lamp in a procession.

And that other one, who laid down supreme power, has gone back not to the plough like Cincinnatus but to the platform like a buffoon. Domitian summoned the senators to his Alban citadel to deliberate in what dish a giant turbot should be cooked; here two factions, while the empire of the world is at stake, summon the people as if to a privy council to decide which is uglier, a pavement or a tower. Both love granite; neither names the republic. This, no doubt, is the contest of great men: one hires a chanteuse, the other sings for himself, and each counts applause as an argument.

But wait a little. Sejanus' statue, which the people saluted, was melted by the fire, and out of the face that had been second in the whole world came jugs and basins and frying pans. The granite tower, the ballroom, the helicopter pad will one day be rubble, and some bailiff will build a stable from their stones; no one will remember who cracked jokes in Cleveland, who sang in Port Huron. Glory bought with applause dies by applause, and the crowd that cheers today goes looking for another cheer tomorrow.

The remedy? They have no censor to set his mark against a name. Then let the citizen be his own censor: let him come to the rally and ask what the candidate means to make law; if the man cannot answer without a chanteuse beside him, let the citizen stay at home and deny his vote to one who dare not speak without a mime. It is a small thing, but the only thing that cannot be bought. The actor once begged applause from the consul; now the consul begs it from the actor.