Jeremy Lott nails this:
For example, unpaid Bush shill Fred Barnes recently wrote “for the editors” of the Weekly Standard that “Bush had 10 great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House.” Among his undisputed successes on the foreign policy front were “enhanced interrogation of terrorists”, “the rebuilding of presidential authority” and “the surge”.
That an organ of conservative opinion would tout Bush’s moves toward torture and autocracy should be shocking. Notably absent from Barnes’s list was Bush’s decision to launch the invasion of Iraq in the first place, so the best that one of Bush’s most ardent defenders can say is that Bush managed to partially ameliorate one of his worst calls. That should change hearts and minds all right.
The vast majority of the country hates Bush, as is appropriate, but a substantial majority seems to have undergone a hideous moral and intellectual transformation into Bush’s image.