Hang in there, America: Competent leadership is just 600-plus days away

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

McClatchy Newspapers

There are 614 days left until Jan. 20, 2009, and the end of our long national nightmare as President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history.

So much of what they talked about doing in a new century and a new and different world never came to pass. So much of what they did to grow the power of the presidency and prune the constitutional safeguards crafted by our Founding Fathers, they never talked about.

The American people