I started this blog on January 16, 2001.

Four days later, George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States.

Here’s what I wrote the next day:

As I write this, we’re 28 hours and 20 minutes into the Bush II era. How is everything so far? Planet Earth: check. United States: check. Me: check. Charismatic presidential speechifying: well, I guess we can’t have everything. Still, maybe this won’t be so bad after all. Oh, the soft bigotry of low expectations.

“Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

God, how naïve I was.

OK, I was trying to be optimistic. After all, for more than a year before the inauguration, we’d all gotten to know George W. Bush. From the moment he began running in 1999 he seemed like a entitled, ignorant jackass. I rooted for John McCain to beat him in the 2000 primaries so we could be rid of the guy, only to have my hopes dashed. The spring, summer and fall of 2000 were painful to sit through as Al Gore stumbled through week after week of his cringeworthy campaign. My hopes rose again as Gore appeared to close the gap with Bush during the last week of the race. Then we had that wrenching election night, followed by 36 days of whiplash-inducing court rulings.

So by the time Bush took office in January 2001, we knew what to expect from the man.

Or at least I thought we did.

I mean, I knew things would be bad, but I didn’t think they would turn out this bad.

There are presidents who squander great opportunities, such as Bill Clinton. There are those who lead corrupt administrations, such as Warren G. Harding or Ulysses S. Grant. There are those who abuse the powers of office, such as Richard Nixon. There are those who project incompetence, such as Jimmy Carter. There are those who let the state of our nation deteriorate through passivity, such as Herbert Hoover or James Buchanan.

George W. Bush managed to combine the faults of all of his predecessors with something more: he actively made the state of our nation worse. It’s not just that he was a passive incompetent, although he was. It’s that he actively fucked things up.

His failures are well documented and there’s no need to repeat them. If not for 9/11, this man would have been voted out of office after one term. But 9/11 did happen, in part due to his neglect. (Whenever people say, Yeah, Bush sucked, but at least he kept us safe, I want to say, Hello? 9/11?)

So we suffered through four painful years of this man, only to see him ride our fears to re-election. Just barely. God, how much the days after the 2004 election sucked.

And the next four years were just as bad as the first.

Back in 1992, when Bill Clinton beat George Herbert Walker Bush, I figured we were rid of him. The name Bush would sink into the fog of American history, down there with half-remembered presidents like Fillmore or Pierce or Hayes. But no. Like a bad dream, we got Son of Bush, who fucked things up so badly that the name Bush will never, ever be forgotten. The name Bush will be synonymous with all that is bad. He will be legendary.

George W. Bush is the worst president in American history. He fucked up in ways I never thought possible. This is partly because of who he is, and partly because there’s so much more today that a president can fuck up. Still, there it is.

So, here we are, eight years later.

The older you get, the faster time goes by. When I was a kid, the eight years of the Reagan administration seemed like forever. I began them in first grade in New Jersey and ended them in high school in Japan. I began the Clinton years as a closeted college student in Virginia and ended them as an out gay man in the New York area.

Sometimes these last eight years seem to have gone by in a flash. But then I look back at my earliest blog entries, and they seem like an eternity ago. During Bush’s presidency I’ve turned 30, met Matt, started and ended a job, gained a sister-in-law, moved into the city, gone through a few pairs of glasses, gotten a DVD player, discovered TiVo, bought my first cellphone.

When Bush took office I didn’t have a cellphone or a DVD player? Seriously?

And there were no iPods? Seriously?

Barely anyone blogged. (And compared to some others, I was a latecomer). There was no YouTube or Facebook or Friendster or Firefox. Wikipedia was brand new and nobody knew about it.

There was no Lost. No Desperate Housewives. No American Idol. Friends was still on TV. Alias hadn’t yet come and gone.

There were no Lord of the Rings movies, no Harry Potter movies. There was only one Star Wars prequel.

On Broadway there were no Avenue Q, Wicked, or Hairspray. The Producers wasn’t even in previews.

I could go on and on, and doubtless you could create your own list. The point is, it’s been a long eight years, and I will be thrilled to see this man leave office.

Good riddance, George W. Bush. May you not fuck up anything else in the eight days you have left, and then may you never be in charge of anything ever, ever again.