To call this New York Times Magazine piece hagiography is to insult the genre. Peter Baker, formerly the White House correspondent for the Washington Post — and, true fact, formerly my next door neighbor in Adams Morgan — manages to turn in a reported piece whose tone wistfully mourns the predicament of George Bush exiting the White House as an unlamented president, an albatross around the neck of John McCain. The idea that one should dig down deeply to sympathize with Bush is a perversion that could only come from a longtime Washington resident. There are at least 4100 reasons why Bush ought to be greeted forever with the vilest of contempt — oh, wait, I’ve found another 868 reasons, and, lest we forget, here are 1800 more. But look at this:

For better or worse, Bush’s legacy will start with Iraq.

There’s a "for better"? The best thing that can be said about the Iraq war is that it may be possible to extricate U.S. forces with a minimum of damage. To consider that statement exculpatory is perverse. Is it success to ascend from the Ninth Circle of Hell up to the Fifth? Look at what Bush aide Peter Wehner wants us to believe:

“Bush will not have lost Iraq,” he went on to say. “We almost did. It was slipping out of our fingers. Or to use another metaphor, the place was heading for the cliff, and we pulled it out at the last minute. He’s going to hand over an Iraq that is much better than it was two years ago.” Still, Wehner said, the cost of the war to Bush’s presidency proved enormous. “It was mishandled for too long, and we deserve blame for this. If Iraq had gone well, Bush would be a political colossus, and the Republican Party would bear his imprint in every way. But it didn’t.”

One can concede that, politically, Bush has benefited by getting the media to conceptually divide the Iraq war into pre-surge and post-surge portions, and pretend as if the reduced chaos of the post-surge phase vindicates the pre-surge phase. (I explored that for TAP last September.) But that’s actually a statement about his continuing ability to miscast reality to the public. Such is the legacy of Bush. He went out like he went in: a very good liar.