The Appeals Court Of History

Beam analyzes Bush's legacy tour:

By now, the broad strokes of the Bush legacy refurbishment plan are clear. It rests on three planks:

1) Bush's presidency never deviated from its core principle of promoting freedom.
2) Mistakes were made, but only in unwavering service to this principle.
3) Bush succeeded in making the United States safer.

One recalls Lionel Trilling's comment on Tacitus:

It is not, as I gather, that Tacitus lacks veracity. What he lacks is what in the Thirties used to be called "the long view" of history.  But to minds of a certain sensitivity "the long view" is the falsest historical view of all, and indeed the insistence on the length of perspective is intended precisely to overcome sensitivity---seen from sufficient distance, it says, the corpse and the hacked limbs are not so very terrible, and eventually they even begin to compose themselves into a "meaningful pattern."