Wehner, who by all accounts is a thoughtful and sensible person with a lot to contribute to the national debate, is so caught up with angry defenses of the brilliance of policy making during the Bush era that he misses our point entirely. We weren’t making a claim about whether the Bush presidency was an overall success or failure. That’s a question for future historians and we are happy to leave that question to their care. Far more important is the fact that except for a minority of true believers, the American public largely believes that Bush failed, and no matter how many blog posts ex-Bush officials write, that isn’t going to change anytime soon.

There are lots of intelligent people out there who think this is a gross injustice, and want the national conversation to focus on setting the record straight. For its own sake the Republican Party has to deafen itself to their piteous pleas; they are sirens luring the sailors to their destruction on the rocks. This will sound harsh and unfair to some, but it is true and it is real.

Mr. Wehner’s touching, honorable but politically toxic Bush loyalty is the kind of gift left-leaning Dems pray for night and day. Liberals want the Republican Party to spend the next four years defending the Bush record as strongly as possible. They want potential conservative presidential candidates to say as many things as possible that will tie them to Bush in the mind of the public. They want Mr. Wehner’s approach to be mandatory for the next generation of Republican candidates; they want loyalty to the Bush legacy to be a litmus test for decades to come. They want to use President Bush the way their grandfathers used Herbert Hoover, and if Mr. Wehner has his way, they will.