Cheney's Parting Gift

"'You have a combination of no legacy stuff, a horrible economic mess and the likelihood that Obama is going to win,' this person added. 'There is a real sadness there.'"

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write for Newsweek that "those who know the president well say he has withstood the attacks with characteristic equanimity. Bush has never been one to torture himself with doubt or punish himself with what-ifs. . . .

"The opinion of the American people matters to him, and close friends and aides say he is not deaf to the fact that he has become an object of ridicule. But they say he also remains unshakably convinced history will see his decisions, on Iraq especially, as the right ones. The same air of self-confident resolve--reassuring to some, maddening to others--that allowed Bush to claim, during the 2004 campaign, that he could not name a single mistake he had made as president, now girds him in his final, difficult and somewhat lonely months in the White House."

As Wolffe and Bailey note: "Bush, whose poll numbers now hover in the 20s, will leave office in January with perhaps the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. Bush bashing is nearly as popular among Republicans as it is among Democrats."

So how does he maintain the bubble? "As his presidency winds down, Bush has seeded his calendar with . . . informal, non confrontational events in which he can showcase his softer personal side before appreciative audiences who are proud, even thrilled, to be in the presence of the president. Outside the White House, they are not easy to find."

And then there's this: "Some Bush aides privately express relief that political reporters, preoccupied with the campaign, no longer bother to scrutinize the president's every move and misstep."

Wolffe and Bailey also have more backstory about the White House's hurt feelings over Bush getting the bum's rush at the Republican convention in September. But a "senior McCain adviser" tells them that with a hurricane threatening the Gulf Coast, "[t]he last thing this party needed was for people to be reminded of every dumb mistake this administration made with Katrina." As for hurt feelings: "Bush understands the political environment we're in," the adviser says. "Or, hell, maybe he doesn't."

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post about more bubble-preservation tactics: "With less than three months left in the Bush administration, the president's schedule in recent weeks has been full of fond farewells -- from last visits with foreign leaders to get-togethers with those who have worked for him over the past eight years.

"Thursday was a good example. Bush went to Quantico, Va., to attend his last graduation ceremony at the FBI Academy, then stopped off to bid adieu to the military squadron responsible for maintaining and operating presidential helicopters."

Look Back in Anger

His corpse isn't cold yet, but the devastating looks back at Bush's legacy are starting to pour in.

The British newspaper, the Guardian, asked seven American authors to reflect on the Bush era. Their essays are scathing.

Tobias Wolf writes about get-togethers with friends: "When we meet for dinner we do our best to take up other subjects - books, gossip, movies, our children - but then, like the addicts we've become, we sneak back to the drug of outrage, shooting up the latest barefaced lie and squalid revelation, not forgetting to list yet again the national and global catastrophes brought about by the incompetence, hypocrisy, muddleheadedness, venality, truculence, mendacity, callousness, zealotry, machismo, lawlessness, cynicism, wishful thinking, and occasional downright evil of the administration of George W Bush. Our economy is in freefall, our public school system a disgrace, our military exhausted, the wounded and traumatised dying of neglect, yea, the very earth groaning for relief - and he's optimistic! Yessiree! Looking forward to it! Leaning toward us over the podium with that exasperated little squint and that impatient, dentist-drill voice, utterly at a loss as to how he got saddled with a nation of such gloomy Guses and crybabies.