From across the pond...

...comes an editorial in the UK telegraph. It gives a stark yet honest assessment of President George W Bush, that can be tough to read, but interesting nonetheless. The first two paragraphs-

As he leaves the White House at the end of his second term, the President has a poll rating of only 23 per cent, and is widely disliked and even despised. His foreign policy has been judged a failure, especially in view of the long, painful, costly war that he declared, which is still not over.
He doesn't get on with his own party's presidential candidate, who is clearly distancing himself, and had lost many of his closest friends and staff to scandals and forced resignations. The New Republic, a hugely influential political magazine, writes that his historical reputation will be as bad as that of President Harding, the disastrous president of the Great Depression.

Tough but honest assessment, I thought. Then I read the next paragraph-

I am writing, of course, about Harry S Truman, generally regarded today as one of the greatest of all the 43 presidents, and the man who set the United States on the course that ended decades later in the defeat of Communism.

It's good to be reminded that the way we think of our greatest presidents; Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, has been shaped by the intervening years of history.