QotD: The Presidency

Theodore Lowi's "Three Laws of the Presidency" is one of the handier pseudepigrapha of politics, a tip-sheet that dusts off the industry's clichés and repackages them as for-the-ages wisdom. And the truest of Lowi's laws is the third:

    Every president contributes to the upgrading of his predecessors.

If anyone's carving a tombstone for the Bush era, quick: chisel that at the top. The bumbling of the present administration has transformed Ronald Reagan from a flawed-but-fun conservative (amnesty! Gas tax! The Beirut cut-and-run!) into a fixture on Mount Olympus. It has resurrected the reputation of Bill Clinton so thoroughly, so blindingly, that his once-loathed wife now holds 1:1 odds of replacing Bush II in the White House.

David Weigel, "No Newts: Don't get too excited about a Gingrich '08 run", Reason, 2007-03-20