One year from today, presuming the intact survival of the American constitutional republic, we will inaugurate a new president.

Celebrate with me today the countdown to the exauguration of the worst president ever. And his evil warmonger regent, Darth Cheney.

Just think — one year from today, when we lay our heads down to sleep, we will know the world is no longer at the mercy of this incredible sociopath and his tantrums.

I will be very happy to wake up tomorrow knowing that it’s the very last January 21st this occupant of the White House will sit at the desk in the Oval Office. That every day that passes will be the last W tears off his Day-At-A-Glance. After tomorrow, no more celebrations of the incredible life of Martin Luther King will be marred by George Bush in the White House. He’s got just one more Easter Egg Roll to preside over, and then he’s done. There will only be one more round of awkward media holiday parties we have to hear about from Dana Milbank, where those whose job requires them to afflict the comfortable instead comfort themselves among those who afflict us.

One more Crawford August vacation! Just one more State of the Union from this imposter, this hideous blight on our freedoms and our rights. Only one more lighting of the Christmas tree on the Ellipse, and only one more New Years Message to a weary nation. Just one more Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Pride Month for Little Boots to completely ignore!

And, most importantly, just one more September Eleventh for this monster to politicize with his hollow smirking petulance and morbid fake sincerity, knowing as we do that had he and his incompetent crew paid the slightest attention, it might just be another beautiful late summer day — instead of the unifying national sorrowful remembrance it now may become, once the Administration during whose watch it happened leaves office. And only one more awful Katrina anniversary to endure with him in office, skulking out of view while the rest of America wonders guiltily: how could we let that happen, and when will we deserve a President who repairs our Gulf Coast and the hole in our national heart?

War-wracked, exhausted, our young patriots dying on a far desert in a vanity war of choice for old men’s egos and hydrocarbon resources we’ve not weaned ourselves from, our civil liberties curtailed and our goodwill among nations shriveled, a city drowned, our Constitution shredded, our economy teetering and our foreign debt astronomical, a surveilled and monitored America cries out to an indifferent calendar: please, year, speed by quickly. And uneventfully.

For no matter who is your choice to succeed the Dauphin Bush, his successor — now that Rudi 9iu11iani appears to have imploded — cannot possibly be worse than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Celebrate, shall we? It’s only one Leap Year until Exauguration Day!

Photo: Bush speaks to business leaders, 11/13/07; AP/Michael Conrad.