Cross your fingers and hold your breath

I’m sitting at my desk earlier than usual this morning because I wanted to start writing this while Barack Obama was still (in theory at least) the President of the United States. In less than an hour that will no longer be the case. I really can’t bear it.

Like a sucker for punishment, I watched Obama’s farewell address and his final press conference. With the possible exception of FDR, I suspect historians would have to go back to Lincoln to find the last US president with the intelligence, grace and dignity Obama brought to the office.

No man could live up to the expectations his supporters had when he was sworn in eight years ago. Despite many clearly thinking so, he was not the messiah.

I’ve long thought he wasted time seeking bipartisan consensus in the first two years of his first term, when the Democrats had majorities in both houses. Although, as a PBS special last week on his presidency reminded me, he had to use up a lot of political capital in his first months to get the stimulus package – including a bail out for the banks which was equally unpopular with both Republicans and Democrats – voted into law. That before the battle for affordable health care had even begun.

There were things Obama did that I abhorred. Top of the list is the use of drones, which have killed many innocent people, the greatest success of which has been as a recruitment tool for Daesh. (I don’t think war is ever the answer, but if you are going to cross borders to kill people, then man up, put boots on the ground and look them in the eye before you shoot them.)

Damn. I’ve just looked at the clock. As I write, the anus-mouthed narcissist is being sworn in as the forty-fifth president of the United States. Last night this dickhead was given the nuclear codes. The world is about to become a much more frighteningly unpredictable place. (The only person who’s enjoying this as much as the clown who is being sworn in is probably Dubya, now safe in the knowledge that he will not go down in history as the stupidest, least popular man to ever sit behind the desk in the oval office.)

There has never been a classier act in the White House than Barack and Michelle Obama. They vacate the premises to make way for the reality show king of bling and his trophy wife. It beggars belief and yet it’s true.

The Democrats don’t have the numbers to stop the confirmation of any of the greedy, grasping grotesques nominated by the dickhead to form his cabinet. With salivating Republican majorities eager to do his bidding in both houses, all bets are off.

On a brighter note, it seems the professor who predicted the dickhead’s win (who has also successfully predicted every election for the past thirty years) has a follow-up prediction, that the dickhead will be impeached during his first term, possibly as early as later this year. We can but hope. The prospect of a Pence presidency would quite rightly worry women and the LGBT community in the US, but it would at least minimise the possibility of anyone being nuked for an insulting tweet.

Assuming the Democrats can get their shit together (which they bloody well better) and win back at least the Senate in 2018, there will then be some sort of check on the extreme proclivities of whoever is in the White House. Can the world actually hold its breath for two years? Somehow I doubt it.

I know that precedent dictates that outgoing presidents are supposed to exit stage right and shut the hell up, but these are unprecedented times.

Good news that the Obamas are moving into a new home in Washington, DC. Even better news (as the outgoing president stated in his farewell address and his last press conference) is that there are certain issues about which he will not shut the hell up. I hope he keeps that promise.