With the opening of the George W. Bush presidential library at Southern Methodist University (why not Harvard or Yale - where he actually attended?), there is more rethinking of his legacy. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Chait have different takes. And I will add my own.
To me, there are three questions to think about as we reflect on George W. Bush: One, was he smart (this is perhaps the least interesting). Two, was he a good president? And three should our opinion of him be changing with time?
Klein and Chait come to very different conclusions about whether George W. Bush was smart. I tend to side with Chait on this one - President Bush is not very smart. He certainly isn't smarter than Ezra Klein and I don't think he is smarter than me. I will believe that he is smarter than he comes across in public, but that is a low bar.
Having said that, I don't think he was so dumb that he was incompetent. The decisions he made were proposed to him or supported by people that are very smart. Which is why I think this question is ultimately not that interesting. His intelligence level isn't what caused bad policy. As Ezra Klein says, being smart doesn't mean you are wise. What is clear from the policies is that even the people in Bush's administration that I would consider smart were not wise.
The second question is whether Bush was a good president. The answer is still no. He invaded Iraq believing there were weapons of mass destruction, when if he'd given Hans Blix more time (months) he would have found there were no weapons. And by invading Iraq, he took his focus off of Afghanistan, which we are still trying to get out of. On top of that, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan are considered democracies by Freedom House (see this great Wonkblog post on Bush Admin).
Even before the financial crash, which he helped along with increased financial deregulation, growth during his presidency was mediocre. And he grew the deficit by enacting tax cuts and spending increases (the wars but also Medicare Part D) without paying for them. No Child Left Behind increased federal spending on education (though it remains underfunded) and changed the dialogue on education policy, but at best it is imperfect.
So if he was a bad president, do we need to reconsider him now that we have over four years of distance? I unfortunately think the answer is yes. At the time, I couldn't imagine a worse president. Then the country met the Republican Party of 2010 and 2012. This party is much more conservative than President Bush, and some are far less intelligent (see Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, and Herman Cain - Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are probably on par with Bush's dogmatism and lack of curiosity).
As I have said before, Compassionate Conservatism (the disingenuous title though it was) has given way to 47% and pledges to cut Medicaid and other safety net programs. And while I disagree with Bush increasing the deficit during good times, the GOP's obsession with balanced budgets even in a recession is crazy and dangerous. And while Bush was willing to support the bail out and fiscal stimulus, current Republicans don't even support monetary stimulus.
John Stewart said that George H.W. Bush looks better in retrospect because he is being compared to his son George W. Bush. He then jokes maybe George W. will look better if one of his children become president and invades the moon. But we don't have to wait that long. We've seen an even worse GOP; it is among us. So yes, we should reconsider George W. Bush and realize that as bad as he was, it can still be worse.
