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One of the more laughably adolescent and petulant aspect of Bush's Farewell Legacy Tour is the refusal to examine any aspect of his presidency, brushing it off with a "Well, you may not agree with me, but you have to agree that I made tough decisions."

Maybe it's not so surprising that the guy who got to Harvard and Yale on legacy and who needed to be bailed out by Daddy and friends on every business he attempted thinks that he deserves credit for merely sticking it out and not pushing off "hard" decisions to others. Certainly, that has been his modus operandi before public office. But clearly, that excuse isn't flying with the media any longer, as exemplified from this segment of The Chris Matthews Show, which highlight the fatal flaw of Bush's reasoning: you don't get credit for making the tough decisions, you get credit for making the right decisions.

KAY: Of course he had to face tough decisions. Because that’s the job of the American president, you have to face tough decisions. And you have to face them well and make the right decisions. I think the trouble is in all the interviews he’s given—these farewell interviews—he still really hasn’t answered satisfactorily the central question of his presidency: Why did he invade Iraq? It’s not enough to say it was a tough decision, so I made it, you have to say it was the right decision. [..]

RATHER: As far as it goes, it’s a fair estimate that great presidencies are made out of crises. If you come up with the right answers. The business of tough decisions, every president has tough decisions to make. Herbert Hoover had tough decisions to make. He made some of the wrong ones. Gen. Grant, for all his generalship when he was president, made tough decisions, but made the wrong decisions. This is the way history goes, fairly or unfairly. It seems to me, you make the wrong decisions, you pay the price. [..]

WHITAKER: Chris, you know, Bush likes to think of himself as the Great Decider, but I think one of the things that history is going to record is how indecisive he was at key moments. You think about Katrina, and handling that crisis. You think about the current economic crisis, that he’s leaving and how he was sort of asleep at the switch as that all happened. And even on Iraq, even though he was decisive on going to war, he was incredibly indecisive about the aftermath of the war. And I think that that’s the root of a lot of the problems we’ve had there.

Wow, you know, these Media Elite types are actually starting to sound like us DFHs, aren't they? Too bad their honesty only kicked in as Bush got kicked out.

Transcripts below the fold

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The History News Network (HNN) conducted an unscientific poll of professional historians to compare their sense of George W. Bush's presidency to that of contemporary public opinion. The poll's flaws notwithstanding, Bush didn't do very well.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

At least two of those who ranked the current president in the 31-41 ranking made it clear that they placed him next-to-last, with only James Buchanan, in their view, being worse. “He is easily one of the 10-worst of all time and—if the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities matter—then probably in the bottom five, alongside Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore, and Pierce,” wrote another historian.

Bush probably would have done even worse, but some historians thought it best to wait for hindsight. One told HNN, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title. Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”

The 'Tude:  Muslims in Afghanistan?  Who knew?

Connecting.the.Dots: Almost six years after the Twin Towers fell, the attack has claimed two more lives and injured others, but this time the work of terrorists from the Middle East was apparently abetted by good old-fashioned home-grown crime and corruption.

Intrepid Liberal Journal:  Government lies about the Drug War: a podcast interview with criminal justice professor, Matthew Robinson.

Talk To Action: The Distiguished Panel of Judges named Dr. Gary Cass, "Theocrat of the Week".  They applaud his efforts to head off Darfur-scale genocide against America's Christians.

Consortiumblog: While writing his new book about the Bush presidency, Robert Parry was surprised at how often former Vice President Al Gore turned up making tragically prescient comments.

Looks like we're losing--at least for the time being--two of my favorite bloggers; Bob Geiger and Max Sawicky.  They'll be missed.

When history looks back at the disgrace of the Bush presidency, the one celebrated quote that will help capture much of what went wrong will be John DiIulio’s. It was DiIulio, the first director of the president’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who told Ron Suskind, “What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

DiIulio was taken in by a bogus pitch in 2000. He notes today in the Philadelphia Inquirer that it was eight years ago this week that Bush delivered his first campaign speech, which DiIulio helped write, titled “The Duty of Hope.” Candidate Bush rejected as “destructive” the idea that “if only government would get out of the way, all our problems would be solved.” Rather, “from North Central Philadelphia to South Central Los Angeles,” government “must act in the common good, and that good is not common until it is shared by those in need.” There are “some things the government should be doing, like Medicaid for poor children.”

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s rather difficult not to laugh.

DiIulio pauses to take stock of what happened to “compassionate conservatism.” He's not impressed.

Stealing Duncan's term---I give you Eli Lake's take on Joe Klein:

I bet at least half of the netleft are failed professors, over-educated literary theory PHDs, who make themselves appear more numerous than they arethrough their anonymity and deliberate manipulation of google. Their real audience are the technocrat staffers for Dems on the Hill, who agreed with them that their bosses were pushovers during the Bush presidency.

What if the netleft, that has created the impression that there is a rising plurality that would like to abandon Iraqis to Qaeda, Quds and the Ba'ath, are just a few thousand committed Marxists in their pajamas? What if the Dems have strategically miscalculated? What if their over-compensation is to appease a vocal 1 percent of the electorate that actually draws contempt from the rest of the country?

Tbogg does some digging and it isn't pretty...

Bring it On! Too bad for Ron Paul, who had only facts on his side and it was night for fact-free bloviation. If you're looking for applause at a Republican debate, endorse torture

The Hill: Lobbying reform is causing headaches for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), now tasked with repairing a split in her caucus as freshmen advocate for stricter rules while some senior members fight to preserve the status quo. Meanwhile, GOP Whiners are threatening to shut the House down...

Brad DeLong: Research continues on the stupidity rays emanating from the American Enterprise Institute

MuzzleWatch: "Never Again" means for everyone

Prometheus 6: Just another day in the Bush presidency

Needlenose: The gift that keeps on giving

(C.C. Goldwater, granddaughter of Barry Goldwater & Stephanie Miller, daughter of Bill Miller, courtesy of StephanieMiller.com)

While we can proudly claim Stephanie Miller and filmmaker C.C. Goldwater as liberals, that's not usually the case for notable Republicans. However, as I've said before, today's Republican party bears little resemblance to the conservative values of previous generations, and the literal Scandal du Jour way of life for the Bush administration is making it more obvious that this is not your father's conservatism.

NEWSWEEK:

Susan Eisenhower is an accomplished professional, the president of an international consulting firm. She also happens to be Ike's granddaughter-and in that role, she's the humble torchbearer for moderate "Eisenhower Republicans." Increasingly, however, she says that the partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency-and the takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers-is driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP. Eisenhower says she could vote Democratic in 2008, but she's still intent on saving her party. "I made a pact with a number of people," she tells NEWSWEEK. "I said, 'Please don't leave the party without calling me first.' For a while, there weren't too many calls. And then suddenly, there was a flurry of them. I found myself watching them slip away one by one."

Eisenhower isn't the only GOP scion debating if the party still feels like home.

Mike's Blog Round Up

The Reaction: A brilliant dissection of the "meltdown" of the Bush presidency. Unsurprisingly, if his presidency ended now, Republican George W. Bush would go down in history as a failure, according to a majority of college history and political science professors surveyed nationwide.

Martini Republic: Alex looks at the White house website and concludes that we've reached a lot of "turning points" in Iraq. Here's another one.

Crooked Timber: Journalists vs Bloggers

The Reaction: The hubris, incompetence and cronyism of the Bush presidency. Oh yeah, and criminality. Hate to say "we told ya so," but it looks like Kerry was right about this, too. But the port outrage is a perfect metaphor for BUSHCO's philosophy
of...er...government. Their FEMA contracting is another.

DJ Paul Edge: Bush hands over control of US Customs Services to Colombian drug lords.

The Opinion Mill: When conservatives attack Bush, it's always a policy matter; when liberals do it, it's always a personality disorder.

of...er...government. Their FEMA contracting is another.

DJ Paul Edge: Bush hands over control of US Customs Services to Colombian drug lords.

The Opinion Mill: When conservatives attack Bush, it's always a policy matter; when liberals do it, it's always a personality disorder.

slacktivist: Joe Barton, R-Texas, is a petulant jerk

Norbizness: Another edition of '"The 'Left' is Attacking the City!!"

slacktivist: Joe Barton, R-Texas, is a petulant jerk

Norbizness: Another edition of '"The 'Left' is Attacking the City!!"

Don't missTHIS !!

Sigh*...Another column, another Ronnie reference...guess Washington never got around to passing those necrophilia laws...

DIRELAND: The internationally renowned correspodent for The Independent-- the great British journalist Robert Fisk -- has been banned from entering the United States.

Laura notes the conservative dismay and frustration at the failed Bush presidency: Andrew Sullivan, Dan Drezner, Robert Novak, Robert George...notes the conservative dismay and frustration at the failed Bush presidency: Andrew Sullivan, Dan Drezner, Robert Novak, Robert George...