Bush's Legacy and Obama's Incoming Administration

This morning I read the following article in The Economist:
Renewing America | George Bush has left a dismal legacy but Barack Obama can do much to repair the damage I thought it was a great article and that it did an excellent job of contrasting the previous administration's performance with what we might see with the Mr. Obama's. It's not that long, but if you don't have time to read it, the following argument in the article is something to think about:

"[A] president who understands, as Mr Bush did not, that America is not the uncontested hyperpower of the 1990s—one who values "soft power" more than the hard version—will be a change for the better. . . .

Mr Bush (see article) had a simplistic tendency to see the world through ideological and partisan spectacles. He hung on to bad advisers for longer than he should have; he divided the world too often into good and evil; and he plotted to establish a Republican hegemony although he had sold himself to the electorate as bipartisan. In economic matters, he was too prone to sacrifice the long-term good for short-term gain. He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq."

Well, I'd better get back to studying. Although I don't agree with everything I read in The Economist (its stance on gay marriage, for example), I think it's a fantastic newspaper and highly recommend it--very readable and very insightful. This British newspaper describes itself in the following manner (the author(s) of every article are intentionally kept anonymous):

"What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position.' That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as—more recently—gun control and gay marriage."