Dana Milbank engages in some qualified pining for our former president:
I miss George W. Bush.
I don't miss him in the sense that I wish he were still president. If he were, we might be at war with Iran and North Korea by now, and perhaps Portugal. Neither do I miss the endless debates over waterboarding and the Iraq war -- bad memories that have returned to the news as Bush has re-emerged into public view this week to launch his book.
Rather, I miss him because in the end he was willing to toss aside his ideological orthodoxy when the national interest required it -- a trait conspicuously absent among his fellow conservatives these last two years.
Bush was a more bipartisan president than Barack Obama. But that has to do less with him being ideologically heterodox than it does with the quality of his opposition. Democrats were willing to work with Bush. Republicans simply don't think anyone else should be allowed to govern and have taken to opposing Obama even when he proposes things they once supported.
