George W driven to Rehab

Uncredited image from Esquire.

Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street Monsignor Ross Douthat joins the choruses of "He couldn't have been that bad":

a lot of liberal criticism of Bush’s record (and especially his domestic record) looks not only misguided but absurd — and I think many liberals know it. Look at Yglesias’s piece, for instance, listing “positive aspects of the Bush presidency that often get overlooked.” It includes signature Bush-era legislation like No Child Left Behind Medicare Part D, plus smaller initiatives like the AIDS-in-Africa push and the “housing first” approach to homelessness, plus the emergency responses to the financial crash, plus some praise for Bush’s failed immigration push and his overridden farm bill veto. That’s almost his entire domestic policy!

First, whatever Yglesias says about No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D (you can tell he's neither a parent nor retired) they were disasters. (And yes, I do know Teddy's sacred name was on the former.) Second,

 That’s almost his entire domestic policy!

I just about rest my case. Third,

True, the list doesn’t include the Bush tax cuts...

Now it's his entire domestic policy. I.e., he had virtually none except to bring the country to fiscal ruin. And to note that Democratic legislators have not been very eager to close the cuts in an attempt to spread the Plame, I mean blame, is pretty disingenuous even by the young Monsignor's standards:

but you may have noticed that the Democratic Party showed no enthusiasm for repealing them for anyone except the wealthy. 

The Bush tax cuts didn't especially benefit anybody except the wealthy.

I don’t really think there are a lot of serious Obama-era liberals ready to argue that, say, Bush’s deficits were actually the grave threat to the republic Bush-era liberals made them out to be...

No, they were much worse—Bush's deficits were what above all made it politically impossible to enact an adequate stimulus after the 2008 crash...