One of the best ways the George W. Bush White House can show that it intends to use its re-election “mandate” wisely and well is to downsize the mid-January inauguration activities.

Some Republican leaders are saying they intend to raise as much as $40 million via private sources to finance a gala occasion. Some find such indulgence bordering on the obscene, even if no taxpayer dollars are involved. The nation is at war, and Americans are and will be fighting and dying even as the ceremonies unfold. Lavish get-togethers and expensive receptions, banquets, cocktail parties and dances somehow do not fit comfortably into such a scenario, many feel.

Comments the Baltimore Sun: “The very fact that U.S. soldiers are dying in Iraq and going without needed protective equipment (such as vehicle and body armor) should make organizers think twice about the cost and scope of the festivities.”

Some individuals and groups are being asked for $250,000 gifts.

There is understandable resentment that money-conscious planners are not even making apologies about their efforts to raise major funds. Adds the Baltimore Sun: “George W. Bush certainly has something to celebrate — he actually won this election outright. But does he need a gold-plated inaugural when families of Reservists and National Guardsmen serving in Iraq are struggling every day? … Mr. Bush could have set a different tone this year by urging corporate and wealthy patrons to adopt a company of 130 soldiers or donate $250,000 to a relief fund for military families.”

That is the least that should be done, all things considered.

The Philadelphia Inquirer offers a convincing conclusion to pleas for a more somber, less-glitzy inaugural program. Full-speed-ahead GOP planners say that symbolism and the substance of democracy are to be featured. Responds the Inquirer:

” … inaugural festivities have little to do with the substance of democracy. They’re all about symbolism.

“Bush would show a keen sensitivity toward the situation of his soldiers by finally acknowledging that wartime demands true sacrifice — a notion betrayed by his insistence on tax cuts. That symbolism would be far greater than the grandest of balls.”

The Bush people and the Republicans should look back at how inauguration ceremonies were handled for President Franklin Roosevelt in early 1945 after a wartime election year of 1944.

Some could argue that the scope of World War II was more vast than the current action. Yet a soldier’s life at risk in 2004 is no less vital than one in 1944 and 1945. The staging of the 2005 inauguration should be scaled down to emphasize that.