As Popularity Plummeted, Bush Began to Get It Right

Today's Bush administration isn't pursuing all the disastrous policies it was 5 years ago, writes Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, and unlike Dubya himself, his successor would do well to pay attention to what he's gotten right. Though both John McCain and Barack Obama keep their distance from the deeply unpopular incumbent, they won't find success in simply reversing all his policies.

While Bush's first term was marked largely by unilateral cowboy diplomacy and an ill-begotten global war on terror, his second has seen quiet changes in response to policies—such as in Iraq—that simply weren't working. "Change has not extended to all areas, and in many places it's been too little, too late. But that there has been a shift to the center in many crucial areas of foreign policy is simply undeniable," Zakaria writes. Regardless, the next White House occupant will still have plenty of cleanup to do.
(More George W. Bush stories.)