Controversial Article on Bush - The Accidental Radical

The Atlantic -- "In 2009, George W. Bush retired to his ranch in Texas. His nation and his party were not reluctant to let him go. Today he lives in relative isolation, a figure in equal parts imposing and tragic. Bush, like Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, had aimed high and achieved much. But, like them, he had let his impatience and impetuousness get the better of him. He was energetic and assertive, admirably so, but, like more than a few politicians before him, he mistook boldness for sustainability. He pushed the system and the public too hard. He had campaigned originally as a 'humble' man, and in the end humility was forced upon him."

Bush's mentality seems more like that of an entrepreneurial CEO than of a conventional politician: He tends to look for strategies that cut to the heart of the problem at hand, rather than strategies that minimize conflict. "He doesn't like 'small ball'—that's his term," one of his aides says.

The point of this article is not to predict failure for George W. Bush, much less to wish it. The point is to dramatize the stakes he is playing for. He is risking his presidency, his nation's fiscal and geopolitical strength, and the conservative movement. If he wins, he is FDR. If he loses, he is LBJ.