And honestly, this is why Republicans will probably lose 2016. They haven't gotten over the Bush years and Bush mentality. Mind you, neither have the Democrats, but they don't have Bush's legacy to deal with...
From a policy perspective, the worst thing George W. Bush did for America was to essentially remove a "boots on the ground" military option from the table for an entire generation.
Well, that and the worst recession since the 1930s.
I'm not sure the 2003 Iraq War will be a major sticking point going forward. If anything, people are more anxious about needing to intervene in the Middle East now than at any time since 2005. The 2008 recession will be, though and it's the main reason Obama has held up so well in the extended meh economy that followed.
But it's hard to blame Bush for bank deregulation. Clinton and the Republican congress did that in the late 1990's. In this sense Bush was unlucky that 2008 will always be his legacy. I similarly fault Harding/Coolidge more for the Depression than Hoover, who actually did some creative stuff to try and contain it.
In my view, the wipeout of 2008 is blinding Republicans to just how effective the Bush strategy was. He managed to combine record turnout among white social conservatives with the best minority performance for the GOP since 1965. A proud Evangelical Christian with a dash of economic populism who loudly condemns radical Islam abroad while being explicitly anti-racist on the home front is a winning strategy for the American right. For 2016, he/she would have to renounce the anti-gay stuff in "Christ loves all people" fashion, but all other elements of the Bush strategy still hold.
