I’ve always thought that history is going to be kind to President George W. Bush. While that whole “compassionate conservatism” thing and its derivative policies drive me nuts (what does that imply — that I’m otherwise not compassionate? False, ugh!), I think his humility and good-faith efforts will eventually earn him much more widespread respect than he received when he was in office.

Despite President Obama’s best attempts at a no-holds-barred blame-Bush approach — from continued economic doldrums to Fast & Furious gunwalking tactics, there seems to be no problem that President Obama didn’t “inherit” — it appears that Americans are already starting to look back on President Bush with at least a little more fondness.

The WashExaminer caught this in the latest NBC News/WSJ poll: slowly but surely, President Bush’s approval ratings are on the up and up.

Deep in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll just published is the first hard evidence that the nation is softening on the 43rd president run out of Washington by Obama and still the target of the current president’s efforts to blame somebody for the rotten economy.

According to the poll, 36 percent of the nation has a very positive to somewhat positive view of the former president, a 10-point surge since he retired to Crawford, Texas after two terms. For a year and a half Bush languished in the poll, but has recently ticked higher, though 45 percent still view him negatively. But that’s better than the 53 percent who viewed him poorly after Obama took office, said pollster Peter Hart and Bill McInturff.

Not bad, considering that Bush has largely removed himself from major public view (in order to do things like work with the Wounded Warrior Project, so awesome), while Obama has done everything under the sun to capitalize on the country’s exasperation near the end of the Bush era.

Honestly, President Obama couldn’t even ease off the blame-game for a day when President Bush visited the White House a month ago for his portrait unveiling — Obama just had to remind everyone how horrible the economy already was when he came into office. Awkward.