It’s official: Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. Bush apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to frustrated, sputtering rage than any president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon. 

That should be a pretty good indicator of where Bush will rank when historians get their hands on his shameful record — in the cellar, alongside the only president who ever had to resign in disgrace

Bush didn’t come by this distinction with help from family connections or the Supreme Court. No, he earned it. 

Look at the situation Bush’s successor will inherit. Throughout much of the world, the United States is seen as an arrogant bully whose rhetoric about freedom and the rule of law is disgracefully empty. The lawyers and students who are being tear-gassed in the streets of Pakistan’s cities will long remember that, when push came to shove, Bush chose to stick with a cooperative dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, rather than live up to his words about the universal value of democracy.

The next president will be left with more than 100,000 U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq, with an unfinished war in Afghanistan — and, between those two crises, a strengthened and emboldened Iran that hopes to dominate the world’s most dangerous region. Nice work.