Can Bush's reputation be rehabilitated?

Considering the 360 degree turnaround some have done on the legacy of former U. S. Attorney General John Ashcroft during the past several days, columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times questions whether the reputation of President George W. Bush, currently in tatters due to the Iraq situation, might go through a similar rehabilitation:

Full disclosure: My wife was formerly a senior aide and speechwriter for both Ashcroft and Gonzales, so I always took a particularly keen interest in both attorneys general. It is nice to see conventional wisdom come around to my long-standing and oft-stated view that Gonzales is a subpar hack and Ashcroft a man of integrity. Don't get me wrong; I don't think I'd much like to have a beer with either of them (certainly not with Ashcroft because I hate to drink alone). But, as my wife, Jessica Gavora, puts it, "The one thing you always knew about John Ashcroft was that he's not for sale."

Of course, Ashcroft's rehab is a byproduct of partisan opportunism. Gonzales is trailing blood in shark-infested political waters, and, by telling this story, Comey has thrown the flailing AG an anchor instead of a life preserver.

Still, there are some interesting lessons here. First, the attacks on Ashcroft were always grotesquely unfair. As a presidential candidate, Howard Dean — who often decries how Republicans question the patriotism of Democrats — saw nothing wrong with flatly asserting that Ashcroft was "not a patriot. He's a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy." A second lesson is that the Christian scare that has been spooking liberals often amounts to mass paranoia. In 2001, USA Today's former Supreme Court reporter asked, sincerely, "Can a deeply religious person be attorney general?" The bigotry of the question should be self-evident, and so should the answer. In almost every way, Ashcroft was the Bush administration's most exemplary Cabinet official. An undisputed hawk on the war on terror, he was nonetheless immune to the groupthink that has plagued the Bush White House. From the sound of it, that independence improved administration policymaking.

It also improved Bush politically. In his first term, Ashcroft was the face of the Christian right in the Bush administration, serving as a valuable lightning rod, making Bush seem, and perhaps be, more reasonable. In his second term, Bush picked Gonzales, a quintessential yes man, to replace Ashcroft's useful contrary voice. This only reinforced the bunker mentality that has so ill-served the White House.

While I am not quite ready to bestow Man of the Year honors on Ashcroft, Goldberg's column does make some valid points. As for the restoration of President Bush's tarnished image, the passage of time does not seem to do have much for Lyndon B. Johnson, and President Bush does not even have the long laundry list of domestic accomplishments that took place during the Johnson presidency.