Bush has complained, these sources said, that the [Foley/Hastert/Predatorgate] scandal torpedoes furious GOP efforts to reenergize a dispirited political base - especially Christian conservatives.

"There's steam coming out of his ears over the Foley thing," someone who talks to the President regularly said. "The base is starting to get turned off again."

For all the misery, Bush remains defiantly resolute. He will campaign relentlessly in the next month and has told friends he's determined to prove his Democratic and media enemies wrong on Election Day.

Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington's legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years.

"He's remarkably optimistic," a Bush insider said. "Like Ronald Reagan, he has a gift for looking beyond the morass in front of him and sticking to his goals, even if it's not popular."

Bush's ability to not see what he doesn't want to see goes far beyond that, of course -- he also has the ability to not see that the morass in front of him is of his own making (Iraq) or that of his party (Foleygate).

But what interested me about this report was Bush's remark about George Washington's legacy still being debated 200 years afterward. It brought back memories of those dorm room bull sessions my second year of college, when Larry Vincentino (who was a history major and presumably should know) insisted that the conventional wisdom was all wrong, and Washington wasn't actually "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," but instead was first in peace, tied for second in war, and maybe fifth in the hearts of his countryman, while Tyler Babco (a poli-sci guy) insisted that fifth was much too low when you factored in that Martha was pretty well-liked and that sorta rubbed off on George a bit.

Good times.

Bush, of course, is entirely incapable of coming up with an idea like this all on his own, so either there's a right-wing revisionist take on Washington that's making the rounds of Bush's circle, or else some aides (or Laura?) are feeding him nuggets so he won't get all self-involved worrying about what his deservedly shitty historical reputation is going to be. I can't seem to find the revisionist take on Washington's legacy, but perhaps I'm just missing it somewhere -- anyone know what's going on?

Is the whole "Washington's legacy" thing more code to the troops, like "Dred Scott," or does Bush just not know what he's talking about (for the umpteenth time)?

[via Digby]

What, me worry?

Update: Debate about Washington's legacy? News to this guy, and this one. Like a loyal empty-headed moron, Tony Snow repeats the mantra. If there was such a debate, surely the revisionists would have been at pains to mention their thesis in this article on Washington's legacy in Wikipedia, don't ya think?

I think I might have another idea about where this is coming from, somewhat at odds with my previous ones. Bush has been at pains, on several occasions, to say that he's read three books on Washington. I think we can dismiss that as an exaggeration -- perhaps he read one books, or parts of three books, but almost certainly he didn't actually read three books on George Washington. In his reading, Bush was surprised to find out that things he had taken as gospel about Washington -- the cherry tree incident, for instance -- were actually not true, but an early example of American image mongering. Shocked by having his perception of our first president shaken, Bush explained it to himself by inventing an ongoing "debate" about Washington and, with his own historical legacy obviously very much on his mind (or else why would he and his minions tell us so often that he's not at all concerned with it?), that eventually morphed into a lively and ongoing contemporary debate about Washington's legacy, the fact of which would give him solace in those rare moments when he allows himself to see a glint of the truth about the mess he's made of the world in just 6 years.

That's my theory, and I'm stickin' to it.