There were no terrorist attacks in the United States on George W. Bush's watch (after 9/11). He protected some oceans from polluters while standing up to scientists who say we should take action to prevent global warming. He fought to prevent gays from getting married. He appointed judges to the Supreme Court who will make sure it stays that way. Those same judges will also lead the charge to overturn Roe v. Wade. He called for increased aid for Africa, even if he took away their free condoms. (Remember when he tried to boogie?) He protected interns from cigars, and blue Gap dresses from DNA stains.

Some think he'd make a fine baseball commissioner. Some say they’d like to have a beer with this good ol' boy who cleared brush on his ranch in Texas and played T-ball with kids on the White House lawn. They see a Washington outsider who spent more time away from the White House than any other president. He played by his own rules.

They don’t see the crimes and conspiracies that Bush’s critics and the media holler about. They see a well-intentioned Christian who did the best he could under incredibly difficult circumstances. They agree with Bush when he blames previous administrations for the current economic crisis. They agree with him when he says the government responded quickly to Hurricane Katrina. They agree that water boarding is not torture, or maybe they don’t care if it is. We are at war and that's the kind of difficult decision that must be made. They believe that Bush was let down by incompetent intelligence agencies in the lead up to the war, not that Bush shaped the intelligence, and mislead the public, to suit his agenda. Some believe that the intelligence failures don’t matter anyway because the mission in Iraq was noble, even though the country didn't attack us, was not a threat and had nothing to do with 9/11. A democracy was born and a tyrant executed. They believe that the billions of dollars Bush’s associates made during the war, during the housing boom (and bust), and during soaring (and falling) oil prices are all just a coincidences, and that anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy theorist. They believe that the Dick Cheney being the former chief of Halliburton had nothing to do with the billions of dollars the company made from no-bid contracts during the war. In fact, they believe we were lucky that someone with such expertise was at the president’s side.

Bush, to them, was a man who only did what he thought was right, polls be damned, and results be damned, too. He had good intentions, they say.

It makes no difference to them that this good ol' boy was educated at Yale, that he never fought in a war, that he was a failed oil man, that he wouldn't admit he ever had a cocaine problem, or that you can’t really be a Washington outsider when your daddy was the head of the CIA, vice president, and president of the United States. It doesn’t bother them that he bought his Crawford ranch to use as a prop before his presidential campaign in 1999. It doesn’t bother them that he vowed to retire there but instead will live in a mansion in Dallas. It doesn’t bother them that he was warned about Osama bin Laden’s intention to attack the United States and didn’t act. It doesn’t bother them that he vowed to catch Osama -- "dead or alive" -- and when he failed to do so said it didn’t matter one way or another. It doesn't matter to them that some estimates of the civilian death toll in Iraq are over 100,000. War is hell, and those estimates are propaganda, they say. It doesn’t matter to them that the mission in Iraq was declared accomplished when it wasn't, and it still isn't as he leaves office.

While it might matter to them that Bush inherited a budget surplus and leaves with one of the largest deficits in the country's history, they don’t think it's all his fault and they don’t blame his economic policies in the lead-up to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush is just one man, they say. They say presidents usually get too much blame and too much credit for what happens during their stay on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It doesn't bother them that Bush consistently sought, and took, more power for the presidency. He challenged the Constitution, the very instrument citizens use to restrain government, and he leaves office having created the largest, most secretive government in the history of the United States. To some, this seemed necessary to protect the country from terrorism.

Bush was the decider for eight years and part of being a leader means taking responsibility for the results of your administration’s actions. If the president follows bad advice, it’s his fault for taking it. If the president appoints someone who does a bad job, then the president did a poor job by appointing that person. It’s an amazing amount of responsibility. Some say it takes 50 years before you can fairly evaluate a presidency, but it must be unfair to say that we can only really know once all the witnesses are dead.

If, for example, you think scientists have a more diabolical agenda than oil executives, now is your chance to rethink things. If, for example, you think journalists are conspirators but the government will tell you the truth about what is really going on, now is your chance to rethink things.

Even if you rethink things just for a moment, please do so.

You don't have to like Barack Obama. You can still vote for Sarah Palin in 2012. But reevaluate what happened during the past eight years. Give it a good long think on the toilet, then flush. Twice.