Onion employees, from left, Kelly Shey, Baratunde Thurston and Matt Kirsch work at the election center at The Onion offices in New York. After eight years of the Bush administration, the staff of the satirical news empire is looking forward to poking fun at a new target.

New York ? Days before the January 2001 inauguration of President Bush, the Onion ran a story headlined: “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over.”‘

Writers at the satirical paper still speak reverentially of the story, in which Bush promises to take the country into a deep recession, worsen the environment and “end the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton.”

“Wow, was that prescient,” marvels Joe Garden, the Onion’s features editor.

Whether or not you share that political viewpoint, the Bush era will end soon and the political comedy epicenter will shift to Barack Obama or John McCain.

At the Onion – “America’s finest news source,” as it calls itself – this change in the Oval Office is a welcome opportunity for new material after eight years of Bush and an interminable presidential campaign.

Nationwide coverage

Founded 20 years ago by two students from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Onion gradually grew under Editor Scott Dickers and went national in 1996 when it started its Web site. (The move was partially inspired by the viral spreading of the story “Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia: Cities of Sjbvdnzv, Grzny to be first recipients.”)

It was around then that the Onion really honed its approach as always rigidly couched in dry writing style with slick graphic displays.

The paper, distributed weekly in 10 cities, has a circulation of about 900,000 and is now based in New York. The more profitable Web site draws 5.5 million unique visitors per month and earlier this year won seven Webby awards, second only to The New York Times.

All the while, the Onion has spread to other media forms. It has published numerous best-selling books, including the rewrite of history, “Our Dumb Century,” and the mock atlas, “Our Dumb World,” which was just released in paperback.

The paper also comes with a serious and respected entertainment section of criticism called the A.V. Club. Onion Radio News is a daily one-minute podcast that consistently ranks among the most popular on iTunes.

And last year, the Onion launched the Onion News Network, a parody of a 24-hour TV news network, perhaps the Onion’s most costly startup with a staff now of 20 making videos with high production value.

ONN executive producer Will Graham and head writer Carol Kolb (a former editor of the paper) translated the Onion sensibility to video, with stories such as “John McCain accidentally left on campaign bus.”

Campaign central

The Onion centers its election coverage at a site separate from the main Onion page, theonion.com/content/whitehousewar. It includes candidate profiles, videos and a glossary (“debate: a contest to see which candidate can answer the fewest questions”).

It will offer continuous Election Day coverage (and the day after). This might be as reactive as the Onion has ever been; the videos take months to prepare and each paper issue is created about two weeks in advance.

To prepare for whatever happens Tuesday, the Onion has – like a real newspaper – organized coverage for either a McCain win or an Obama win. Both video and text stories have been completed for both eventualities.

Assistant editor Megan Ganz says the prospect of Obama jokes has lightened the room, producing sillier stories like the Onion ran during the Clinton years.

“We get asked a lot if we secretly want Republicans to win since there’s so much more material,” she says. “The thing is, we always say, we have to live in the country, too. And also, when stuff is really going bad, it’s harder to make jokes.”