The fleeting "popularity" that George Bush speaks fondly about is the one that we so generously bestowed to him right after September 11th.

Not because he was a great president, but because he was our president during a time when we thought patriotism trumped everything. We gave George Bush that allegiance during that terrible time - not because he was good, but because we were good.

Yes, that fleeting good feeling that George Bush reminisces about is that same "popularity" our tragedies bequeathed to him after he flew back to the White House following his temporary meltdown in Florida - and following his manic and confusing MIA detour to Wyoming. On September 11th, we gave him an approval rating for the first time in his presidency.

That's the transient popularity that he did nothing to deserve - but did everything to destroy in short order.

A May 2008 poll suggested that President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey indicated that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

At the height of the Watergate scandal, President Nixon's disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66 percent.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.

"Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s," Holland said. "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952."

Exactly how "fleeting" and "temporary" was his popularity? Very.

Let's do a reality check.

Take a look at this page. It clearly shows that Bush had a tiny little blip of popularity in 2001 following September 11th, but that all the rest of his long, excruciating years have been marked by dramatic and consistent unpopularity. Fleeting popularity? Very fleeting. He got that part right.

Record unpopularity of President George Bush and the Republican Party, combined with economic worries among voters and a broad desire for change, would normally make this "the single best year for an Obama-type candidacy, and the single worst year for a McCain-type candidacy," says Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Republican Neil Newhouse.

On the one hand, the image of the United States has improved slightly in many countries over the past year. On the other, the new optimism appears to be driven largely by the fact that Bush will soon be leaving office.

In addition, while the prospect of Bush's departure and the excitement of the U.S. primary contest have helped the image of the United States, a worldwide surge in concern about slumping economic conditions and a widespread view that the U.S. economy is harming local economies may tarnish it...

"There has been no sea change in world views of the United States," Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, said of the results, which were issued Thursday.

"Europeans are still much more negative than they were at the beginning of the decade, and highly negative views prevail in the Muslim world. But there are some indications that the world sees the possibility of change with the prospect of a new president."

The 24-nation survey, which was conducted in March and April, shows that many people who have been following the U.S. presidential race expect U.S. foreign policy to improve when Bush leaves the White House in January.

It also shows that publics worldwide have greater confidence in Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, than in his Republican rival, John McCain, "to do the right thing regarding world affairs." (More here: Bush's exit helps U.S. image abroad, survey shows)

And for our current president, my letter:

Dear George W. Bush,

I read today how you stood by your uncompromising principles rather than allow yourself to be influenced whatsoever by any information you could have gleaned from opinion polls.

You also spoke reverently about your mirror and about your desire to have a good relationship with the man you see there as you leave the White House. George, I think if you look close enough, your mirror might one day be honest with you. Who knows. The man in the mirror might be able to explain to you that it's not at all awesome or impressive that you ignored the concerns and opinions of the majority of American citizens.

As for your legacy, will history teach our children that you were the good man that tried to keep others from throwing us all under the bus? The one that led with your honorable core principles? Hardly. It will show that you were the one that indeed throw us under the bus, but not for any worthy cause. History will write that you sacrificed all of us for power for yourself, profits for your cronies, or just mere childish stubbornness that no one will ever confuse with high-minded values.

George, you won't be commemorated as a respectable or principled man as you seem to hope. Far from it. No, instead, you will be widely remembered for your deceptions and your delusions. We will never forget that you were the decider. You will be memorialized for what you decided to destroy.

We will recall how you had affection for all the people you hired - whether they were competent or not. We will recollect how you loyally stood by your staff even when they neglected us, lied to us or caused us harm. Because you liked referring to yourself as the commander-in-chief, we will relive your presidency with varying measures of disgust as we look back upon you as the liar-in-chief, incompetent-in-chief, and destroyer-in-chief.

We won't forget how you constantly talked about your successes in war, your goals of "spreading" freedom and how you tried to convince us that people from other countries hate us because we are civilized - while at the same time you aggressively dismantled our own successes and violated our own cherished freedoms - and how you stood idly by as the infrastructures of our hard won civilization crumbled down around us.

Do you really think we will ever admire you? We don't and we won't - not ever. History will not be at all kind to either of us. Not to you for your transgressions and not to us for our inability to keep you from committing them.

Perhaps your mirror will continue to tell you only what you want to hear. It's possible that you may live the rest of your life believing that it was a good thing that you ignored all the opinion polls while you gazed at your own face instead.

Although we tried, we were not powerful enough to restrain your delusions while you were in the White House. So, we surely will be unable to impede your self-deception in the years to come.

So, George, feel free to continue to surround yourself with sycophants that tell you it was fabulous that you kept your blinders securely on. Let your inner circle join you at your mirror as you remind yourself how gallant you believe you were when you ignored all the attempts we made to alert you of our troubles.

As we struggle to get through our days without health care, jobs or savings, you will have the opportunities to admire your own face as much as you want, to your heart's content. You will have the freedom to imagine, if you wish, that we will be forever proud that we actually had a president for eight years that didn't pay any attention to us.

We really don't care what you see in your mirror, George. It makes no difference to us at this point. Frankly, it's getting close to the end of your presidency. We're ready for you to just go have some time alone with your own image.

All I ask now, George, is that you go on your way. In the coming decades, as all the rest of us direct our attentions towards working together to repair all that you have broken, please spare us from having to think about you. Please don't be visible or audible. As we work as hard as we possibly can just to undo the tremendous damage you have caused in our society and in so many of our individual lives, just please, George, please stay away. We desire no further relationship with you.

George, we have survived you, some of us only barely. We have much work to do now.

History will say that you have been the most unfleetingly unsuccessful, unprincipled and unpopular president the American people have ever had to suffer through.

Nora Thomason
Just an average United States citizen