Dear Mr. President,

With all the hoopla of your successor’s inauguration festivities, I thought it would be a great opportunity to write you and let you know about the many ways your exodus to Texas will affect me. See, I figure since we’ve shared the last 8 years together, largely on your terms, you might like to hear what an average American like me will ultimately think of as Marine 1 sails you away:

I will miss your giant Presidential-seal belt buckle.

I will miss your skills as an “opening day” pitcher. If Presidential success was based on skills such as this, you would be President for life.

I will miss your sneak-attack, impromptu back-rubs of female foreign heads-of-state.

I will miss Bob Woodward books about how totally ass-f***ing-backwards your administration ran the war.

I will miss your affinity for bold, yet sometimes misguided declarations. For example you knocked my socks off when you told Saddam that he had “until sundown” to leave Iraq before our invasion. Very, very Dallas of you, sir!

I will miss your eloquence when reading children’s books.

I will miss your stiff arms.

I will miss your command of folksy sayings such as the “fool me once” adage that you were able to use to such great effect.

I will miss your boss door-opening skills, especially the time when you displayed them in front of the entire Chinese press corps.

I will miss your deft piloting and landing skills (on an aircraft carrier at that!).

I will miss your physical fitness, which was no doubt responsible for your cat-like reflexes during that whole shoe-attack thing.

I will miss having you show our Olympic athletes encouragement.

I will miss your ability (or lack thereof) to enunciate.

I will miss knowing my President, the keeper of the secret codes, can use a chainsaw.

I will miss your extreme pretzel-eating.

I will miss the look on Vladimir Putin’s face that says, “What the hell is this guy talking about?!” so frequently seen whenever the two of you got together.

I will miss those killer orange-jump suits you’ve helped make so fashionable down in Guantánamo.

I will miss your truly unique vocabulary including words like evildoers, strategery and unificator.

I will miss that deer-in-the-headlights look you got every time you had to remember a foreign leader’s name.

I will miss seeing you have to endure hanging with Nancy Pelosi (I’m not singling you out here, I feel bad for President Obama on this issue as well…)

I will miss your insufficient troop-deployments to Afghanistan.

I will miss your relentless quest to reduce American’s civil liberties to that of a banana republic.

I will miss your effort to privatize the military courtesy of “respectable” American “security and logistics” companies like Blackwater and Halliburton.

I will miss starting wars with sovereign nations under suspiciously flimsy circumstances.

I will miss your undeniable ability to prepare the country’s emergency-response infrastructure for catastrophic natural and man-made disasters.

I will miss New Orleans.

I will miss your inability to explain, let alone understand, complex issues of geo-politics, economics and military strategy.

I will miss being reminded on an almost daily basis that 9/11 occurred on your watch. Thanks for making sure we all remember you were the asleep-at-the-wheel Commander-In-Chief leading up to that crisis – its taking responsibility that counts!

I will miss your VP, Darth Cheney, and his hypocritical, foul-mouthed, perverted slant on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I will miss massive abuses of power such as the U.S. Attorney firings that resulted from ideological differences and, more importantly, spite.

I will miss the systematic dismantling of our economy and the Capitalism it once represented.

I will miss Barney.

And most of all, I will miss how you located Osama bin Laden and brought him to justice just like you said you would when you were standing on that pile of 2,800+ smoldering dead Americans low those many years ago. You've outdone yourself in honoring those patriots as well as the 4,000+ American soldiers killed since we invaded Afghanistan : )

You, sir, changed our country and the world. I don’t think anyone will ever be the same again. Many, many thanks!

Sincerely,

The Smoking Cupcake