Bush: Worst leader since the late Caesars?

Historian Simon Schama lays it on thick this morning. Excerpt:

Where, O where are you, Dubya, as the action passes you by like a jet skirting dirty weather? Are you roaming the lonely corridors of the White House in search of a friendly shoulder around which to clap your affable arm? Are you sweating it out on the treadmill, hurt and confused as to why the man everyone wanted to have a beer (or Coke) with, who swept to re-election four years ago, has been downgraded to all-time loser in presidential history, stuck there in the bush leagues along with the likes of James Buchanan and Warren Harding? Or are you whacking brush in Crawford, where the locals now make a point of telling visitors that George W never really was from hereabouts anyroad.

Whatever else his legacy, the man who called himself "the decider" has left some gripping history. The last eight years have been so rich in epic imperial hubris that it would take a reborn Gibbon to do justice to the fall.

Rhetorical excess aside, Schama does have a point. Yesterday on This Week, Matthew Dowd remarked on how very, very strange it was that four years ago, Republicans were contemplating Karl Rove's grand vision of extending GOP rule for decades, into a "permanent majority." And now, 48 moons later, here the Republicans are with the Democratic barbarians at the gate, reduced to a rump Ravenna. O Fortuna! There really is a classical arc of tragedy present in the rise and fall of the Bush dynasty, and indeed of American conservatism of the last generation. Whether you are of the left or the right, I think we can all agree that these are fascinating times in which to live.

Aside from the grander sweep of the GOP's rise and fall, it's almost wincingly poignant to reflect on the tragedy of George W. Bush. Here is the ne'er do well son with the troubled relationship with the patriarch, who seizes the opportunity to prove himself to his father at his father's game -- and indeed to avenge himself against his father's enemy (Saddam Hussein) and to put his father in his place by defeating Hussein and by being ruthless enough so that he doesn't lose to the Democrats. Bush the Younger surrounds himself with his father's consigliere -- Cheney the Cunning, who betrays the patriarch's legacy -- and his father's archrival, Rummy the Audacious. And in time, under the tutelage of these advisers, and unaware of his own hubris, Bush the Younger not only mires the nation in an unwinnable war in Iraq (this, despite killing the hated Hussein), but destroys the conservative movement. This is a Shakespearean film that desperately needs to be made, but which will not and cannot be made until some years pass.

Anyway, the victorious Democrats would do well to remember the tragedy of the Republican revolution. I'm reminded of that great final meeting between Elizabeth II and Tony Blair in the excellent 2006 film "The Queen," in which the monarch, chastened by public opinion, warns the ultra-popular new PM Blair to beware of the public's adoration, because the crowd can turn on one in a trice.