When Anthony Norman Albanese set out to defend his government in New York last week, he faced a media that, with some exceptions, had come to view Australian subordination to the US as natural.

From this uncritical mindset came the reductive focus on whether there would be a face-to-face meeting with America's rudest president. Was it all Kevin Rudd's fault for being mean in a past post, some wondered.

Australian prestige, perhaps even our national validity, turned exclusively on "his" favourable gaze.

National puffery as cultural cringe.

Poised to strike, opposition frontbenchers inevitably concluded that Trump's non-scheduling of said audience was "embarrassing" and a rebuke for not slavishly supporting America on climate, social media, and of course, the unfettered exceptionalism of

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