"A grownup in a house overrun for too long by children"

From Adult Supervision by Bruce A. Jacobs:

At last: we have an adult in the White House.

The joy on The Mall, where a million-plus of us stood gleefully freezing our asses off to personally experience the transfer of power; the satisfaction that must now be felt by the Iraq vet who once told me that if Dick Cheney had paid a review-the-troops visit to his unit he would have shown Cheney his back and accepted the consequences; the calmly surgical tone with which the inaugural Obama politely dressed down the joy-riding Bush and challenged we citizens to heft the nation's instruction manual and begin repairs of the wreckage; the global relief and celebration at the moment of the inauguration. It all comes down, I think, to the same shared feeling: Whew. Thank God there is now an adult in charge in Washington.

That is what this is about. Beneath the crying need for new policy, for honesty and trust, for intelligent and well-informed governance, is our simple need to know that the United States is no longer being led by a child, a churlish boy who lied when it suited him and blamed others for his failures and who could not be bothered to think hard or to govern thoughtfully. And so off he trots now, back to his spread in Texas, grinning about his presidential frolic, joking about the good times he's had, high-fiving his half-ruined country and the smoking wreckage of Iraq on his way out the door.