Hate to say I told you so, but when he left office I said the passage of time would show his Presidency a lot better than the loonies were screaming.

History has always been a better judge than any other.

++++++++++++++++++++++

As President George W Bush's memoir hits US bookstores, it seems that the American public is now viewing his presidency in a more favourable light. The BBC's Katie Connolly explores why Americans look so fondly on their former leaders.

When George W Bush boarded the presidential helicopter for the final time on a frosty January morning in 2009, the crowds gathered on the Washington Mall for Barack Obama's inauguration booed and yelled colourful epithets as his chopper passed overhead.

Mr Bush was deeply unpopular at the time. While his approval rating after the 9/11 attacks was the highest in history, by October 2008, his favourability had tumbled to a low of 25%.

Now, less than two years after he left office, Americans appear to be looking upon Mr Bush a little more fondly.

According to Gallup polling data, Mr Bush's approval ratings have increased by 10 points - from 35% to 45% - in the 18 months following January 2009.

In an October poll, CNN found that only 47% of Americans thought Mr Obama was a better president than Mr Bush, compared to 45% who favoured Mr Bush. In 2009, Mr Obama was preferred by a margin of 23 points.

"The perspective of time is already softening the once harsh edges of judgment on the legacy of President George W Bush," former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon recently wrote on The Daily Beast. "Torn by worry, folks long for his steadying hand. They miss his warmth and empathy."

Even Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist whose rapier pen dripped scorn on the Bush administration at every opportunity, recently expressed a desire to hear Mr Bush speak out against Islamophobia.

This week, Mr Bush is embarking on a series of heavily anticipated television interviews - his first since leaving office - to promote his new memoir, which has an enormous first print run of 1.5m, indicating that his publisher expects strong sales.

Presidential biographer Doug Brinkley, who has chronicled the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Theodore Roosevelt, says that "a kind of nostalgia for a different time starts settling in" after a president leaves office.

"What you remember about these presidents is that you lived with them for a period of time. Partly, you remember that era when you were younger," Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential historian, told the BBC.

"Maybe there is a desire to look more kindly on ex-presidents because it makes you feel better about the country."

Mr Brinkley says the tendency to revere presidents once they've left office is part of a peculiarly American "celebrity culture" where presidents are the ultimate celebrity - members of the most elite club of all, their autographs and photographs sought after.

"We have a kind of cult of the presidency: their birthplaces, where they lived, any place with presidential associations becomes a national historical site," Mr Brinkley points out

He also says that America's defiant individualism works in favour of ex-presidents even as it dogs sitting presidents.

"We build up the individual so much that they get all the credit and all the blame," he says. In remembering, Americans tend to subjugate the larger forces of history to the force of the individual.

For example, Ronald Reagan is often solely credited with winning the Cold War even though complex political and social dynamics were at play.

Similarly, while in the White House, presidents bear the brunt of the nation's woes, as Mr Obama quickly discovered.

"When they're in office, we brutalize our presidents," Mr Brinkley says. "We're a very impatient society. We tend to blame presidents if the economy is bad or unemployment is high - it's always the president's fault."

"The reality is that we have all sorts of second acts in America," says Mr Brinkley.

Mr Bush, who often remarked that history will be his judge, might well agree.

Yeh. Im guessing it is  a bit like How you  like your  once hated neighbour- and that is when he moves on.

Is it just me, or do others think it's strange that there are approval polls on FORMER presidents?

Many Bush haters will also be buying Bush's book. I'd love to read it.

You can't blame the US's current financial situation entirely on Bush, but you can blame him for creating a huge defecit through the war in Iraq and his subsidies to drug companies - problems left to Obama to solve.

A president who admits he allowed himself to be misled on the reasons for invading another country - he'll go down in history.

The thousands of dead young Americans, the many thousands of mentally and physically crippled war veterans and the increase of suicides, alcohol and drug abuse as well the increase in domestic violence, murders and assaults that will escalate over the next few decades involving the ex service men and women from the Iraq and Afghan invasions.
Lets not forget the worldwide increase in terrorist attacks, deaths and injuries since the invasions.
This should ensure that the dimwitted GW Bush is remembered for a very long time 

adelcrow wrote on Nov 10^th, 2010 at 3:45pm:


The attack on the USS Cole
The 9/11 attackers plans and trips to Afghanistan
The bombing of the World Trade Center
The Oklahoma Bombings
The invasion of Kosovo
The cruise missile strikes on Iraq

All of these under William J Clinton.

Bush was placed in an intolerable situation of the USA being attacked my Muslims from outside of the USA on their own soil.
He also had a madman left in charge in Iraq sitting on a huge supply of the world's oil, threatening Israel and threatening allies in the region.
There was no option but to remove him and invade the country.
I care little for the semantics of whether it was legal or not - which I believe it was.

As Mr Blair put it, it was

'simply the right thing to do and would I do it again? Yes. Absolutely.''

GW Bush managed to send in cargo planes that were full to the brim with PALLET loads of BORROWED CASH that was handed out to support these child rapists, drug lords, torturers and murders while the US economy was collapsing and decent hardworking Americans were losing their jobs and houses at record rates.
Much of this cash which the US taxpayer will have to pay back for many decades went to fund and expand the very same terrorist groups the invasion was intended to destroy.
Who made sure these terrorist groups had the cash to recruit, buy weapons and bombs that would kill and maim US soldiers?..GW Bush did!
Yep..GW Bush was a genius!

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Nov 10^th, 2010 at 2:03pm:


Yea Hitler is pretty popular in Germany nowadays too.