When former President George W. Bush travelled back to Texas today, he did so aboard something called Special Air Mission 28000. SAM 28k is actually the 747 otherwise known as Air Force One, but when you’re no longer the president they give it a special title for a day. Now I’m above cracking any short bus jokes at this point, but I’m not above pointing out that the picture above speaks volumes about the fundamental differences between the outgoing and incoming presidents.

I’ve experienced a sobering feeling amidst the excitement today. Obama is sweeping in to clean up messes, right wrongs. And boy oh boy are there messes. It’s as though the parents are returning home after a vacation and the kids have completely trashed the place. Thank goodness the new guy is competent. And thank goodness he’s a good orator. Obama’s words are steady, calming, full of presence, fatherly. They couldn’t contrast more sharply with his predecessor’s shifty, unthoughtful, uncomfortable-in-his-skin style of public speaking.

Seeing Bush arrive on the Capitol steps to boos was depressing. His presidency infuriated me more than I can say, but this still threw me. Ultimately, it is the office of the President being booed and, taken to its logical conclusion, the country of America booing itself. I don’t think any of us can feel good about that, regardless of how much we may have disliked the 43rd Commander-in-Chief.

Barack and his boy genius pulled few punches in their inaugural speech. Some of the crescendos were open condemnations of the policies of the man before him – the man who just happened to have an excellent seat to hear those crescendos cheered at his expense. I found myself wondering about the thoughts rolling around in W’s head. There were many times in the past eight years when I questioned if the guy was human or reptilian, and today was another of those. Does he feel bad? Could one man truly believe in so many craptacular ideas? Does he honestly think the world turned for the better under his watch? I could never and still cannot figure him. He seemed like an imposter when he arrived in 2000, and in the huge shadow of Barack Obama these past few weeks, he very nearly disappeared. But today, as he limped out of Washington - when I thought I would be slappin’ high fives and eating bacon sandwiches - I couldn’t stop puzzling over what exactly was going on inside Bush’s brain all these years.