Below The Beltway

President Bush bid farewell last night:

Last night, President Bush said goodbye.

Speaking for the last time to a nation he has led for eight years, he mixed his trademark confidence with a hint of contrition, acknowledging that he has “experienced setbacks” but emphasizing that he always acted in the “best interests” of the country.

Standing before television cameras in the East Room of the White House, Bush spoke to a national television audience before a group of invited guests that included dozens of people representing key moments in his presidency, including widows of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and parents of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He boasted of preventing terrorist attacks, pushing education reform and promoting democracy abroad. His tenure, he said, “was a period of consequence, a time set apart.”

Yet the former Texas governor, known for his bluster and swagger, also struck a few notes of conciliation in his remarks, urging detractors to look to his good intentions and suggesting that history will deliver the final verdict on his leadership.

“There are things I would do differently if given the chance,” Bush said during his 13-minute speech. “Yet I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right.

Done what you thought was right ?

Does that include increasing the size of government at a pace unprecedented since the days of the Great Society, presiding over the biggest new welfare program since the introduction of Medicare, increasing Federal control over education, failing to cut Federal spending, and presiding over a war based on faulty intelligence and supported by clearly incompetent planning ?

Yea, I won’t be missing this guy one bit.