The Gatsby Presidency

After drawing comparisons between Bush and various historical precedents, James Dee, a retired classics professor at the University of Texas, sums up what may likely be history's verdict of the man.

One final upper-class trait completes the picture: the "do as you please, devil may care" mentality, expressing total indifference to the idea of personal responsibility. The next president, regardless of party, could do something about that deficiency by announcing on Jan. 20, 2009, that Bush has been appointed as the "war czar" for Iraq and Afghanistan.

These brutal conflicts are "Bush's Tar Baby," and he should not be allowed simply to wash his hands of them and just head for the Crawford ranch — in the manner of Tom and Daisy at the end of "The Great Gatsby": "They smashed things up and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness ... and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

Otherwise, a simple epigrammatic phrase, so far unknown to Google, may sum up the verdict of history: "overborn and underbred."

I don't know if I would wish it on the troops, but it is certainly an appropriate fate for the man.