Now, don't get me wrong; things could go disastrously wrong this year, and they probably will. We could invade Morocco by accident, or find out that all of the bureaucrats in the Department of Transportation have been replaced by college GOPers who don't believe in the theory of transportation, or accidentally misplace Los Angeles. But even when disaster strikes, we'll know that we just have to get through a year until the idiot king is out of office, and maybe then we can start undoing the damage.

Let's be frank: George W. Bush has been the least competent president since James Buchanan. One can argue whether Bush is the worst present of all time or merely one of the worst, but one can't argue that he is a man singularly unable to perform the basic task of governance. Richard Nixon was evil, but he wasn't incompetent.

This is not to say that Bush is an idiot. Though he often behaves like one, Bush's sin has been his lack of curiosity, his inability to grasp that his gut-level reaction to the world is not automatically correct. That's the reason why he was unwilling to ask, prior to the invasion of Iraq, whether we were sure an invasion and decades-long occupation was actually warranted. That's the reason he was unable to challenge the rosy assessments of FEMA after the Katrina disaster. And it's the reason he's worked hard to replace people at all levels of government with his ideological soulmates -- because Bush doesn't just want to hear confirming opinions; he doesn't believe there are other opinions.

That's a bad quality to have in life. That's an awful quality to have in a president. The world is not black and white. Nobody is right all the time -- not me, not you, and certainly not the President of the United States. But adults learn from mistakes, and grow from them. They seek out opposing views, because opposing views can convince you you're wrong, or convince you you're right, or convince you that neither side is right, and there are other answers to find.

Not all of the men and women seeking to replace Bush are truly adults. Rudy Giuliani appears to suffer from Bush's failures, and Ron Paul seems to view the world through a very polarizing lens. But for all their imperfections, most of the Republicans and all of the Democrats running for president this year clear at least one very low bar: they will make a better president than our current one. And that means that no matter what 2008 brings, it will bring us an end to our long national nightmare of incompetent leadership. And that's truly a reason to celebrate.