Velcro Presidency

[credit where due]

Leadership: George W. Bush was pegged as a hate figure even before being sworn in. Yet he resisted bitterness, stuck to principle and became what history will judge to be one of our better presidents.

We may have witnessed in the last eight the Anti-Watergate. Richard Milhous Nixon never forgot a slight, used federal law enforcement powers against his political enemies and infuriated the Republican Party's conservative base with policies ranging from wage and price controls to detente with communists to Supreme Court appointments.

Soon-to-be-ex-President Bush, on the other hand, has taken at least as much personal abuse, yet his graciousness seldom fails. While the 37th president acidly told the press, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore," the 43rd told the reporters at his final presidential press conference Monday that they were

"just people trying to do the best they possibly can."

That's charitable in the extreme.

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