The Columnist Manifesto

... is okay, I guess, given that we have the worst president in U.S. history. The "w" presidency combines the domestic policy of Herbert Hoover with the foreign policy of Lyndon Johnson. Though maybe that's unfair to Johnson. Let's say the foreign policy of William Westmoreland.

We're not in an historic economic crisis at the moment, but history may look back at this administration's "pretend it doesn't exist and maybe it will go away" policy toward global warming with a judgment at least as harsh as on Hoover's timid and doctrinally hidebound responses to the Great Depression.

The high watermark of the Bush presidency was that period when people felt all patriotic and virtuous for submitting stoically to having to remove their shoes at the airport security checkpoint. A great legacy indeed.

Is there any grim satisfaction in the poll numbers which now reflect that over 2/3 of the country thinks the Iraq war was a total mistake and that the country is heading in the wrong direction? Not so much. What do we know now that we didn't know at the beginning of November 2004? It's really not satisfying that the muddled middle 15-20%, the swing voters, needed two years after the election to see the obvious.