George W. Bush will soon no longer be president, and “it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the multifaceted burden that will soon be lifted from our collective shoulders,” Paul Waldman writes in the American Prospect, taking more than a few minutes to catalog the low points of 43's legacy. With the spectacular achievement of Barack Obama, it’s easy to pass over the spectacular failure of Bush. “Goodbye,” Waldman writes, “to the culture of incompetence.”
“Goodbye to playing dress-up in flight suits,” Waldman continues. “Goodbye to strutting and posing and desperate sexual insecurity as a driver of American foreign policy.” And Bush’s ouster means no more of his government. “This presidency is finally over,” Waldman writes. “We can say goodbye to an administration whose misdeeds have piled so high that the size of the mountain no longer shocks us.” (More George W. Bush stories.)