Sizing Up Bush I

TNR's Tom Frank attacks "Poppy nostalgia" -- the center-left's growing belief that Bush the First was a sheep in wolf's clothing. Frank doesn't see the irony that what he attacks Bush for is precisely what Timesmen and -women Friedman and Dowd have recently (though surely not since the election) praised him for, i.e. a complete lack of vision and a bumbling, ineffectual style that in a conservative will always produce liberal nostalgia. Nobody would be praising Poppy except by seeing him through the lens of Bush II -- to his critics, a demagogic chest-beater with too much vision, most of it dead wrong.

My sense is that most American history textbooks that go up to the present don't quite know what to make of Bush I. Perhaps this current mini-re-evaluation (though remember: revisionism generally helps to retrench the standard version) will speed up the pistons of history. High school students, like financial markets, don't like uncertainty.

When Jeb Bush wins in 2008, will we have to endure nostalgia for Dubya? I hope not.