In what could be viewed as “different strokes for different people,” Americans — and others — are counting down the days and hours until inauguration of the 45th U.S. president with mixed emotions.
Take for example former President George W. Bush.
According to satirist Andy Borowitz at The New Yorker, the former president — while recognizing that many Americans are dreading Friday’s Inauguration — says, “To be honest, Friday can’t come fast enough for me,” adding “I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas.”
Why so?
Well, Borowitz explains that Bush is “eagerly counting down the days until he is no longer the worst President in U.S. history” as, on Friday, Bush “will be officially bounced from the worst-President slot.”
Borowitz:
As the returns came in on Election Night, however, the former President suddenly realized that his days as the worst President in U.S. history might be coming to an abrupt end.
“Holy cow,” Bush remembered saying to himself. “Just holy cow.”
On the other side of the globe, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is also anxiously counting down the days to Trump’s inauguration — but for different reasons.
Exulted by Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S., the Kremlin is counting the days to his inauguration and venting its anger at Barack Obama’s outgoing administration, no holds barred.
In view of “Trump’s open admiration of Putin,” the Kremlin is expecting improved Moscow-Washington relations while “[a]t the same time, Russian officials are blasting the outgoing U.S. administration in distinctly undiplomatic language, dropping all decorum after Obama hit Moscow with more sanctions in his final weeks in office.”
“Aware that an open show of support for Trump would only make it more difficult for him to restore ties, Russian officials have mostly focused on blasting Obama’s administration,” such as calling Obama’s team “a bunch of geopolitical losers’ engaged in a last-ditch effort to inflict the maximum possible damage to U.S.-Russia ties to make it more difficult for Trump to mend the rift,” according to The Military Times.
Then there are the millions of troubled Americans who are also very nervously counting the days, hours and minutes until the Inauguration — for a number of reasons.
Alarm clock image: By Sun Ladder – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10959166
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.