Whether you loved him or hated him, generally speaking Bush II governed based on a set of principles that really didn’t change all that much with time, and his approval ratings showed it.

Government’s problem is analogous to Wall Street’s problem: Long-term strategic planning is complicated when you have elections to win, or quarters to beat. The difference between the two is that when you think long-term in politics, they take your company away.

Point being: Better to judge what he’s actually doing than to play the hypocrisy card. If we don’t give politicians a little room to “grow” in office… Well, just imagine he’d done all of those things he’d promised relative to the War on Terror, for example.