When I first tune in to watch the morning's festivities, I am at least as excited, if not more so, that this is George Bush's last day as president as I am that it is Barack Obama's first. It is, however, mere moments before footage of the crowd – that amazing, breathtaking crowd – makes me giddy with anticipation and disinclined to look backward, no matter how thrilled to see the back of Bush I am.
And oh how thrilled I am.
But before I can toast my new president, I've got hours of the usual cable shenanigans through which to sit.
MSNBC is the usual mix of absurdity and unexamined privilege, as Chris Matthews compares the Bushes to the Romanovs (starring Miss Beazley as Anastasia!) and Keith Olbermann says they're so far away that Obama will "look like a raisin". CNN is predictably boring with their "facts" and "restraint", so I head back to MSNBC, where Matthews waxes global, informing me that the US is not as monarchical as outsiders think. Why, just recently US supreme court chief justice John Roberts's wife was standing next to him at the cobbler's!
I switch to Fox News. It's just a test pattern accompanied by audio of Sean Hannity quietly sobbing.
Back to MSNBC, where Matthews is now rhapsodising about the concept of democracy, telling me there is a sense in America that, "on some level", all people are equal. This note is followed immediately by images of Dan Quayle entering the inauguration with Al Gore right behind him, and I think: Yes, Matthews is right. You can be a rich, white, idiot dude or a rich, white, genius dude and become vice-president. Go equality! Maude bless the USA.
When Bush appears moments later, he is booed. Highly inappropriate, wildly disrespectful and, of course, totally hilarious.
Dick Cheney is wheeled in, owing to a pulled muscle from moving boxes, presumably to a giant shredding truck parked in front of his residence.
On nearly all the news coverage, there is some comment about how almost anticlimactic, or, perhaps more accurately, anachronistic this inaugural seems. Between Bush having checked out of the job about two years ago, the election having lasted two years and Obama having given a third as many press conferences since being elected as Bush gave in eight years, the introduction of Obama as president seems somehow incongruous to those paying intimate attention.
Still, it's clearly inauguration day, as evidenced by the fearsome spinning in the graves of Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Fielding Wright and other famous elder statesmen-racists.
Back at the inaugural, Pastor Rick Warren delivers an overtly Christian invocation to the collective chagrin of progressives, including every progressive Christian I know. He refers to the proceedings as "the peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time". Sure it is. Inherent math problem aside, tell that to Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy, buddy.
When Obama arrives, he is the picture of cool calm collectedness, and only looks nervous for the first time during the oath. And then it is done – and we have a new president.
Barack Hussein Obama gives his first speech as our president, and its every word and every beautiful turn of phrase appeals to our better natures. It implores us to service, to sacrifice, to shared responsibility. It asks for our imagination and our participation. It says, in each idea, each exhortation, each question, each sentence: I am a uniter, not a divider.
And on this day, listening to a man who is American and African, black and white, privileged and subjugated, sceptical and hopeful, abandoned son and present father, fresh-faced and graying at his temples, I give myself a moment to believe the possibility that he really is.
The Rev Joseph Lowery gives the benediction, during which he asks that we all "make choices on the side of love not hate, on the side of inclusion not exclusion, tolerance not intolerance," as if to underline the point – and simultaneously remind us all that our new president has occasionally fallen far short of that mark himself.
Former President Bush flies away for the last time in Marine One, to a chorus of voices singing "Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye". Keith Olbermann pompously quotes Shakespeare. Chris Matthews says something tragic about Kennedy's fedora.
And suddenly it's just another day in Washington again.