I've argued often that history will judge George W. Bush much kindlier than current popular opinion. The typical rap is that he is an unintelligent, far-right ultraconservative, selfish theocon. These allegations are nearly all false, and are less supported by knowledge and fact than by emotions and intense ideological opposition. Bush is well-read and his Texas drawl hides his intelligence. He is not far-right or very conservative - in fact, his big-government approach was disappointingly centrist. His demeanour betrays self-confidence, but not selfishness. And he is less theocon than say, George Washington, or any of the Fathers of the U.S. Constitution - read a few of Bill Federer's American Minute pieces for a picture of this. But these things will come out with time.
However, as Victor David Hanson writes at the corner, it's not taking much time at all: Bush Through the Obama Prism.
Obama's victory (predicated on painting Bush as a Hoover/Nixon redux), more so even than perhaps a John McCain's, may do more for Bush's reputation that anyone ever imagined. And the Mumbai mess (over there, not here) will only empasize all this, as an array of old 9/11-era experts who used to warn us about radical Islam, then, in the subsequent respite at home, screamed that Bush fabricated a war against terror against bogeymen, and now in their third manifestation are paraded once more out to warn us about?—why, yes, radical Islam!
