Presidential legacies are a tricky thing – not only because even the most ineffective presidents do so much during their terms that it is difficult to craft a summary of the Nixon and Bush administrations, an overall assessment of their worth as leaders, but also because the value of what they did in office is not a fixed mark that – to borrow from what Shakespeare said in a rather different context – that “looks on tempests and is never shaken”. In assessing the presidencies of Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush, we must, therefore, temporize. We can only speak about the present state of their two presidencies, and understand that in a generation – and even on Nov. 3, 2004 – much of this may have changed.
