In January 2001, mere days before Dubya took office for the first time, satire magazine The Onion published a then-funny piece about president-elect Bush giving a speech assuring the country that ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’. Bush pledged to end the Clinton era — “eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”

According to The Onion, Bush promised to attack the environment, send the nation into massive debt, deregulate dangerous, greedy industries, start “at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict”, bring back economic stagnation, and heal the “terrible wedge President Clinton drove between church and state”. They satirically had Bush concluding:

We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two. Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.

The ironic thing is, their over-the-top predictions came true. Pity that.