Douthat: A Terrible President Who Mitigates Some of His Own Errors is a "Good President."

Conservatives continue to try to spin the Bush/Cheney administration into something non-disastrous. Here's Russ Douthat trying to do that.

(Actually, conservatives now appear to be divided as to whether they want to (a) defend Bush and Cheney or (b) claim that they weren't actually conservatives. The third option--that they were consummate conservatives as well as consummate failures--is, of course, not on the table, despite its obvious truth.)

Douthat starts off by admitting that the administration was an obvious failure...but ends by claiming that, because Bush helped to prevent his enormous, world-altering disasters from becoming gigantic, world-consuming mega-disasters, he was a "good president."

So...if I go burn down the Library of Congress, but call the fire department in time to prevent the fire from spreading to the rest of D.C., I'm a hero? A "good citizen"?

And, as for the Surge: though I supported it, I don't see that Bush gets much credit for it. (a) It wasn't his idea, and (b) since he opted for more commitment and more force at every turn, he doesn't get credit for the one case in which it turned out to (to some extent) work. Insert stopped-clock platitude here.

In the end, this looks like barely-camouflaged attempt to spin Bush into being a non-terrible president.

Sorry, Russ.

Nobody's buying that.