Over Christmas break, I read The Boys of Winter, which highlights the 1980 American hockey team that beat the Soviets and won the Olympic Gold medal. (This is not an endorsement of the book — it was pretty boring unless you LOVE hockey. Watch Miracle on Ice instead.) However, the story takes place during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and the late President died in December, as I was reading the book.

The Boys of Winter was not overtly political. It briefly discussed how during the opening events, one of the U.S. Olympic commissioners gave a speech that indirectly chastised the Soviets for invading Afghanistan and disrupting the world unity the Olympic Games tries to celebrate. (Of course, tensions continued to mount and the U.S. boycotted the summer games in Moscow just five months later.) The book also recounts the players being whisked away to the White House to meet President Carter the day after they won the gold. Mostly, the story simply highlighted the working-class American boys who joined together for an unlikely victory against the Soviet Union — the best hockey program in the world at the time.

Any good book will invite you to consider what you know about the people, places, or time period in the story. The Boys of Winter caused me to ponder life during the Carter administration, which ended just two years before I was born. I saw people on social media praising and critiquing Carter after his death, some lauding his work with Habitat for Humanity and others offering scathing reviews of his policies and his propensity for meddling in foreign affairs after leaving office.

A few days after Cater’s death, I was visiting my mother-in-law’s house and mentioned the book I was reading. She remembers watching the iconic US/Soviet hockey game as she held her firstborn baby (my sister-in-law) who was just a week old at the time. My MIL and her mother were sitting at the table with me, and they began recounting their memories of Carter’s presidency: record-breaking inflation, 18% interest rates, gas rationing and lines at the pumps, and the grain embargoes that crippled our relatives who were North Dakota farmers.

“It was such a depressing time. You could only go to the gas station on certain days of the week based on your license plate number, and you would still wait an hour for your turn at the pump. I think Carter’s economic policies essentially ruined farming forever.” This was my mother-in-law’s summary of this dark era when she lived as a young farmer's wife and new mom in rural North Dakota.

As an elder millennial, I have now lived through seven different presidents and even more terms. I have watched the pendulum swing from Republican to Democrat and back again. I was born in the Reagan era. I can vaguely recall the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal when I was in elementary school. I was a first-time voter in the hanging-chad election of 2000. The Twin Towers fell during my first month of college. I remember when “Obamacare” was the greatest debate in the land. I, too, was stunned by Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016. I guess I have finally reached that point in mid-life where I have lived longer than I realize and have more wrinkles than I’d like to admit.

But even though I have not liked all of our past presidents and have disagreed with many of their policies, I have never felt the way I do as we say farewell to the Biden administration.

Good riddance.

Joe Biden was the worst sitting president I have experienced in my lifetime… A 2020 election fraught with controversy and shenanigans. His speeches oscillating from incoherent mumbling to rage. The worst inflation.

(Note: I bought eggs this week at the grocery store during the last week of Biden’s presidency — $9.69 for 18 eggs. And this was the first time eggs have even been in stock for the past three or four weeks. Second note: I picked up my phone while writing this to confirm the price I spent on eggs to find a group text where one of my neighbors was frantically asking to borrow eggs to make cornbread for a dinner party in a few hours because the store is completely out again. I guess I got lucky with my $10 score a few days ago…)

And let us not forget the Covid-era restrictions the federal government nursed forever. Masks on children. Closed churches. Online high schools. And the worst condemnation for any state that finally said, “We are sick of this. We are going to open up and act normal.”

And then there were the federal vaccine mandates — when government employees and some of our best military officers lost their jobs after refusing a toxic, ineffective injection (that was quickly proven to pose specific harm to the hearts of healthy young males).

Good grief.

Shall we discuss the gender lunacy that has taken place over the past four years as well? Men playing on women’s teams (and crushing their skulls) while Biden and friends try to make transgenderism a legally-protected class. Men in women's prisons. Trying to declare fake amendments in his final days in office.

Or perhaps we should remember Biden’s foreign and economic policies - his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan or that he gave away more than 65 billion dollars to Ukraine during his term.

I don’t know if we can even count the number of illegal migrants who have crossed our borders over the past four years (because who can track what is done illegally?) but estimates range from 8-20 million.

Or should we ask why Biden continues to “forgive” college loan debt in direct opposition to a Supreme Court ruling?

I don’t know if Biden made these decisions independently or if he had “handlers” who exploited his mental decline to exert their political will. All I know is that this president, his wife, his vice president, and his whole team made up the worst administration of my lifetime, and I only have one word left at this point….

Goodbye.

I don’t know that Trump is some kind of political savior. I don’t even know if what’s been done to our economy and our national demographic can even be undone at this point. I don’t know if we are going to enter into a common sense era and see Vance or DeSantis as president in the future, or perhaps the pendulum will keep on swinging right to left, left to right. Perhaps Republicans have compromised so much on abortion and gay marriage that there is nothing left of true Conservatism in America.

I don’t know any of that.

I simply believe the next four years will be better than the last four, and that is a very good feeling.

If you want to read the best Olympic sports story of all time, I highly recommend The Boys in the Boat. It chronicles the University of Washington men’s rowing team that took Olympic Gold at the 1936 Games in Berlin, and it’s one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time.

If you and your teen need help with your college search, may I suggest The College Guide? It's meant to help Christian families find the right college.