Bush inherited a recession from Clinton, then after hard work presided over genuine economic growth and created jobs. At times it was a rocky road. More times than a couple, it was a bleak morning to wake to, but against long odds at some points, Bush pulled off unlikely victories: executive, legislative, military and social.

No right wing individual will deny the rights of Reagan, T. Roosevelt and Lincoln to greatness. Measuring modern-day influence takes detailed analysis. We are just beginning to learn how it went. So mush will be revealed post administration. In this case, the abuse of a democratic congress and president elect to write history is a risk. The left will learn that Americans respect courage. Americans will slowly find that in this president’s history.

Cheapn’easy Bush bashing ever popular with the Crikey readership.

Howard, Blair and Bush are all now patently ‘criminals’ and/or idiots.

Not one meaningful argument supplied and indeed there could not be. If Bernard had evidence, Bush would have been been indicted, impeached and Cheney POTUS, Costello would have been PM and Howard and Blair would be in jail.

Of course Rudd would enjoy it in terms of heigtening a negative perception of the opposition but he would never utter a word in support of any of its infantile assessments.

What a woefully poor assessment of this Bush presidency with absolutely no effort even at a constructive critique.

What self respecting journalist would want this article in their body of work?

And if we survive the last 13 days, to think he will always be “a president” by convention.

By harming America I presume you mean warm up act Enron, then Wall St crash, then 2 page $800B bail out ‘plan’, auto makers hitting the wall and so on.

Good to see the Henry Kissinger Lehrer line getting more work: How many million dead Vietnamese to amplify that sad insight? Even worse to think Kissinger stopped Nixon from dropping any number of nuke bombs and so possibly earning it. Talk about the Devil getting a day pass into Heaven.

As said Howard can’t wrap himself in the Australian flag over going into Iraq. He’s not going there in our name. The biggest anti war rally in his own city of some 250-500,000 rejected his war in Feb 2003. And when the evidence finally came in about no WMD post 2004 election we got rid of him asap in 2007. Fact is the UN got it right, the peace rally too, and Howard and Bush got it wrong, so terribly wrong.

Afghanistan was justified and Iraq an inevitable conquest. Find me one national intelligence agency that countered the world consensus that Iraq was armed with WMD’s pre March 2003. The same consensus that rides high on the Goracle’s alarm. A swift victory that freed Iraqis. As any other new nation liberated from tyranny, a working structure won’t happen overnight. But the betterment in Iraq’s condition will forever be credited to Bush’s coalition.

Bush was certified President twice. The re-election came 18 months after the Iraq conflict began. The first term was the most popular ever with an average approval rating of 67%. Contrary to what the intelligentsia implies, Bush himself wasn’t responsible for mismanaging Katrina; that responsibility was delegated to Michael Brown. The president doesn’t organise disaster relief operations.

Who says the Americans don’t have a sense of irony!