Here's some photos of a certain gathering we don't often see unless it's at a funeral for a President:

WASHINGTON DC - In a historic meeting, current President George W. Bush met with President-elect Barack Obama and former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter on Wednesday, January 7th, at the White House.

During the meeting between the current, future, and former leaders of the free world, the men who have all shared the same office and powerful responsibilities talked about the duties of the office.

"One message that I have and I think we all share is that we want you to succeed," said President George Bush to President-elect Barack Obama.

"Whether we're Democrat or Republican, we care deeply about this country. And to the extent we can, we look forward to sharing our experiences with you. All of us who have served in this office understand that the office transcends the individual. And we wish you all the very best. And so does the country."

President-elect Obama thanked President Bush for hosting the meeting and noted the opportunity to rely on the other men in the room in running the country.

"I just want to thank the President for hosting us," said Obama. "This is an extraordinary gathering."

"All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office. And for me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary. And I'm very grateful to all of them."

The Presidential group had lunch in a room next to the Oval Office where they dined privately with no one else in the room.

"All of us would love to be flies on the wall and listening to that conversation," White House press secretary Dana Perino said to the Associated Press.

The meeting of all of the current living Presidents of the United States is the first since President Ronald Reagan hosted leaders in the White House in 1981 with Reagan, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and future President George H.W. Bush present at the same time. source.

I have a funny feeling the new guy in charge of the Liberal Party of Canada is going to hang on to his job longer than the last two leaders combined. That hardly amounts to much time considering the short reigns of Stephane Dion and Paul Martin Jr.

Today, Liberal MPs, Senators, defeated candidates, and party executives gave their endorsement to install Michael Ignatieff as the interim leader and presumptive permanent chief five months earlier than originally planned. Party members will have their say in May at a convention where he'll have his official coronation given his candidacy will likely go uncontested now that Bob Rae has gracefully removed his name from the race.

There's a lot going for Mr. Ignatieff. Besides the fact that he's articulate, intellectual, confident, centrist, and without political baggage, perhaps the most significant strength in his leadership is the fact that he has effectively united a caucus in very short time. Demoralized by two successive electoral defeats, weak leaders, and a close call with a dubious coalition, Liberals must be shell-shocked but relieved to have someone at the helm who atleast provides some hope for the future.

He's by no means without flaws. His intellect and high foreheaded references to Aristotle and Socrates will undoubtedly turn off the joe six packs. His mannerisms and airs may get the better of him but he'll be anything but boring. He'll most certainly be a capable match to Stephen Harper, who I doubt will be using his party machine to belittle Ignatieff the way it was used on Dion. For Harper, the easy days of being Prime Minister are now over.

Click on the thumbnails below for larger images.

Pity Stephane Dion as a failed leader on this day he announced he was quitting as Liberal leader a full 6 months before a more dignified farewell? Nah. Surely, Dion deserves the same ridicule Stockwell Day received during and after he was dumped unceremoniously by his fracturing party after election defeat. But, as things often turn out for disgraced former political leaders who aren't of the conservative kind in Canada, think Bob Rae, Jean Chretien, or David Peterson, Stephane Dion could very well rebound back to popular favour in short time.

It is truly amazing and startling that Dion got as close as he did to toppling the Conservative government with the aid of cobbled coalition and claiming himself the crown only weeks after taking his party to its worst electoral defeat in decades. To see him fall out of favour with his party in a matter of a couple of days after the Governor-General accepted Stephen Harper's plea for proroguing Parliament is equally as amazing. And to think that it was an out of focus television address that knocked many Liberals to their senses to second guess the whole union with "socialists and separatists" is just incredible.

Some time before Dion was chosen Liberal leader I rated my impressions of him alongside a lengthy slate of candidates running to replace the previous leader Paul Martin jr. I had a good idea back then that his struggle to communicate in English would hobble his aspirations. Even so, upon his victory just over 2 years ago in 2006, I suggested some willingness to accept that he could be the anti-establishment leader needed to take the Liberal party in a new direction, leaving the reek of the sponsorship scandal in the party's past. A much needed Liberal Party rebranding was thought to be in the offing. There was something to hope for in Stephane Dion, a scholarly man who could have brought a high level of academic intelligence to the national debate, enough to humble the existing slate of leadership clowns, who, as it turns out, have outlasted the nutty professor.

There will be no dignified departure for Stephane Dion. His behavior over the past week has erased the respect he earned for the Clarity Act, his efforts to establish the conditions for negotiations between the federal government and a provincial government wanting to secede ie: folks like the BQ MP's who he was cozying up with last week. His pursuit of a carbon tax with the Green Shift could have been his shining legacy even if the economic turmoil overtook it as the issue of the election of 2008, if only Dion could have adequately explained it.

If there is one thing we can thank Stephane Dion for, it is the fodder for which he provided to editorial cartoonists for the past two years.

I should've known something big was going to happen while I was spending last Friday at a midwest mall in the United States while all kinds of action was happening on the home front. It happened exactly two years ago when the same Prime Minister at the centre of the current political crisis was provoking national debate with a Quebec is a nation within a nation controversy.

Those were the early days of the Stephen Harper government. Now, it seems, we're witnessing the dying days of his short lived second term government -- reelected just 6 weeks ago to form a slightly stronger minority against a greatly weakened Liberal Party Opposition.

The impetus of the creation of a coalition of three divergent political parties now set to form a government is Stephen Harper's inability to outline a serious effort to tackle the ominous economic challenges that lie ahead in what is now generally accepted as a worldwide recession. Perhaps the reality of the Conservative's reluctance to throw money around is to a great extent due to questions swirling around what actions will be taken in two months time with a new administration in Washington. Of course any Canadian government can't easily admit the reality that our economic stimulus policies are significantly influenced by actions made in the United States.

But really, this big hissy fit carried out by the Opposition is less about rescuing the nation with a big stimulus package, than it is about being needled by a rather pushy Prime Minister who wanted to take taxpayer subsidies away from political parties. And so, a hormone generated bout of revenge by 3 humiliated leaders is about to impose its very unstable will on Canadians during very unstable economic times.

From what I'm sensing, Canadians' giddiness or outrage over this coalition is based on whichever way they voted in the election just a month and a half ago. Even going back several elections, though, Canadians have shown themselves to be anything but supportive of left of centre governments. As someone who has moved between supporting centrist Conservative and Liberal governments in the past, I've got a hard time accepting the Liberals cozying up so much with the NDP. I would guess that a lot of other voters who kept the Chretien majorities (before the taint of the sponsorship scandal) in power would share my sentiments.

More outrageous, however, for many more Canadians has got to be the position of the separatist Bloc Quebecois in propping up the Liberal-NDP alliance. Conversely, how are nationalist Quebeckers going to absorb the BQ warming up to the Liberal Party of Canada, with it's Clarity Act architect, Stephane Dion at the helm.

Need more be said about how appalling the political situation in Canada has become when the Liberal Party's most disasterous leader ends up becoming this nation's next Prime Minister? A leader who turned the natural governing party into a regional rump concentrated in Toronto and Newfoundland.

Much more can happen in the space of a week, but as it stands, the haste to which the political triad is moving could very well be its undoing. The Conservatives may very well be the beneficiaries some weeks or months down the road if Canadians are suddenly thrust into an election. If today's TSX all time one day record plunge is any indication of how the financial world is viewing the antics in Ottawa, a lot more damage can be done than a lackluster Conservative economic statement.