Bush is all presidents

This isn't even surprising. Is there even an above-average president that Bush hasn't compared himself to at this point? Lincoln, Roosevelt, the other Roosevelt, Truman, presumably Reagan, George Washington (I think), Winston Churchill (just for fun), and so on. He's done this so much that one suspects (okay, it's more or less obvious) that he cares more about how history views him than how the American people do today. I'm sorta hoping that he throws us some curveballs (here are some suggestions):

• James Monroe-presided over an "era of good feelings." There was general agreement on the issues, no foreign intrigues, everything was a-OK. Just like today.
• Ulysses Grant-ah, the great warrior himself. He and Bush share similar vetting techniques and a characteristic loyalty that can only be encapsulated by H.L. Mencken,
  
  "His belief in rogues was cogenital, touching and unlimited. He filled Washington with them, and defended them against honest men, even in the face of plain proofs of their villainy."
  
  Makes you wonder which one he was talking about.
• Warren G. Harding-good conservative Republican. Won an election by polarization. Same kind of vetting program as Grant. Harding was never fit for the Presidency, and admitted as much. That's where the analogy falls apart. Also, Harding was a wildly popular President, even after Teapot Dome.
• Bill Clinton-just kidding. He's not really like Clinton. I would construct a bad faith case to irritate conservatives, but I won't.
• Jimmy Carter-plain-spoken Southern evangelical. Good family man. Disastrous president. Ushered in an era of dominance by the other party.

As with all historical analogies, they tell us more about the person making them than about current events. What George Bush's invocation of Abraham Lincoln is one of two alternatives: either he still truly believes in what he's saying and doing, which is possible, or he realizes he's a colossal failure and he's just trying to boost his self esteem by noting that, yes, some great presidents have been unpopular too, so logically (but not really logically), since he's unpopular he's got to be a good one as well. My instinct, of course, is to say the second one, but isn't Bush's lack of self-awareness and self-knowledge part of the problem? I've tried to be even-handed with Bush, but either he's a truly principled purveyor of the flawed, oversimplified, contradictory worldview he subscribes to or he's the most stubborn liar in the world. After all this time, I'm still not sure which one is true.

I could say how wrong this analogy is, but it's not really a wholehearted thing, so I'm going to give a half-assed response: Bush inherited a prosperous country at peace and has given us a nation of recession and war. Lincoln inherited a nation officially separated and at war and he won the war. Done.