We know that the left will look upon the Bush Administration as a total failure. The question is, will the right do the same?

Bush is likely to be judged harshly by conservative historians because of his reluctance to truly pick up where Ronald Reagan left off. While the "warning signs" about Bush's big-government conservatism were plain and clear in 1999-2000, the right had little choice but to support him; there was simply no electable Reagan-style conservative running for the GOP nomination who could have defeated Al Gore.

It's hard to declare the Bush Administration a disaster from a conservative standpoint: he has excelled in the traditional conservative areas of tax reform, national security and reforming the wayward federal judiciary. However, conservatives will not ignore his extreme reluctance to secure the border, his embrace of questionable (to say the least) legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act and, most of all, his unwillingness to truly challenge his ideological opponents.

Yes, Bush has chastised those who seek America's retreat and defeat in Iraq--but he has passed up opportunity after opportunity to firmly rebuke his Democrat critics for their extreme partisanship. Bush has been quite poor when it comes to using his "bully pulpit" to condemn those who insist upon putting their particular partisan interests ahead of the nation's interests.

Think of all the slurs the Democrats have hurled since the War on Terror began. Ted Kennedy declaring that the Iraq War was a fraud that Bush cooked up in Texas for political gain. Richard Durbin suggesting that the way we treat detainees in Guantanamo Bay is similar to the way Nazis and Soviets treated those who tried to resist their tyranny. John Kerry asserting that American troops have been terrorizing women and children in Iraq. Bush should have unleashed rhetorical hellfire upon these Democrats for their idiotic, destructive remarks. Can anyone even remember what Bush said about these loathsome claims?

Conservatives knew Bush wasn't Reagan II, but at the very least, they hoped that he would fight as aggressively for the interests of the Republican base as our soldiers are fighting for freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Bush has always been hesistant about characterizing the Democrat Party as an entity inimical to America's best interests.

Like Bob Dole, who in 1996 famously declared that Bill Clinton was his opponent and not his enemy, Bush wants to think the best of his fellow man, regardless of his fellow man's ideology. He sees the War on Terror in terms of good and evil, but he doesn't really see American politics the same way. This is what separates Bush from Reagan: Reagan clearly viewed American liberalism as a cancer that threatened to destroy America's fundamental greatness. Bush simply views liberalism as an opposing political ideology.

Again, this is not to gainsay Bush's accomplishments, or to suggest that he is the intellectual inferior his left-wing critics insist he is. It's only to explain that Bush, for all his attributes, can never really fill Reagan's shoes--because he simply lacks a fundamental desire to crush American liberalism under his heel.