Hmm...it looks like Matt Yglesias is angling for some sort of wanker award today:
I also take the view that Bush is probably correct to think that history will remember him kindly. American presidents associated with big dramatic events tend to wind up with good reputations whether they deserve them or not. One possible Bush analogy would be to Woodrow Wilson, who did all kinds of things with regard to civil liberties that look indefensible today and whose foreign policy ended as a giant failure, but who was associated with both big events and with big ideas that were influential down the road. Someday, I bet there will be democracies in the Middle East and some future Republican president will figure out a way to put meat on the bones of "compassionate conservatism" and Bush will be looked upon as a far-sighted figure who made some mistakes in a difficult period of time.
I'm not sure how much good faith was put into this, but I can think of a few differences between Wilson (the only example given here) and Bush. For one thing, Wilson won his war, and Bush has, well, not. Wilson's term was marked by a dazzling record of progressive change, including the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, women's suffrage, etc. Bush's record on domestic policy is pretty sketchy: No Child Left Behind, which everyone hates, stalled immigration and social security plans and a prescription drug bill that conservatives have retroactively decided to hate.
I am aware that future generations aren't going to care about the nuances of Bush's domestic policies, just like nobody cares about Wilson's policies. The fact still remains that Wilson won his war, and by Yglesias's yardpost Lyndon Johnson ought to be a very popular president, as Johnson presided over some turbulent times. Johnson's ideas, though, became discredited by his disgrace, just as Bush's ideas have.
I guess the only way I see vindication for Bush is if the situation in Iraq significantly improves, with respect to the political process, within the next year. I know Matt doesn't believe that, and I'm not sure even an improvement viz. Iraq helps Bush's reputation. After all, fatalities have dropped in Iraq but Bush's popularity hasn't risen. It's become uncoupled from the war, and I think that's a sign that the Bush brand has been irreparably tarnished, and I don't really see much in terms of a future effort to resurrect the Bush image on the part of his followers, who I sense will be more than happy to forget his reign.
All of this is not to say that Yglesias might not be right. I do find the fixation among liberal circles on proclaiming Bush the worst president ever is puzzling. Is it really necessary that everybody believe that Bush is worse than Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding? To some extent, it's got to be that they want to have some hard evidence to correspond with Bush being their most disliked president ever. Honestly, Bush is terrible, but I could care less if historians rank him above James Buchanan.
