Bush does not want to go down in history as the president who lost in Iraq. His strategy to the extent he has one is to hang tough and let whoever succeeds him take the fall.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Iraq is going to go down as one of the greatest blunders in American history.
The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.
If history is a guide, a victory for Obama means he faces the prospect of a second term dogged by scandal or inertia.
As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.
Donald Trump is already losing badly to Hillary Clinton. He is a weak candidate, and he's performing that way.
Donald Trump has a mantra of despair, of loss. He says we don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don't. And he says the American dream is dead.
Trump is not going to win the presidency because he himself is a weak, weak candidate.
Obama hasn't lost his standing because of tricks played by the Republicans. He hasn't lost his standing because the media's not fair to him. He hasn't lost his standing or his approval number because the media spent four years attacking him like they did George W. Bush. This is all on him.
It isn't just that Obama's policies have failed; it's that he has essentially given up and is asking us to accept a lesser America going forward, as if resigned to the fatalistic belief that America has begun an inevitable and unavoidable decline.
George W. Bush is history's president, a man for whom the long-term success or failure of democracy in Iraq will determine his place in history.