Rove: Bush hardly worst president

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By Jon Ward

In a vote taken at the beginning of the debate, 65 percent of the audience sided with Mr. Weisberg and Mr. Jenkins, 17 percent disagreed with the proposition, and 18 percent were undecided.

At the end, 68 percent said the Bush presidency has been the worst in the past five decades, while 27 percent agreed with Mr. Rove and Mr. Kristol and 5 percent remained undecided.

The most heated moments came during the debate over Mr. Bush's biggest decision - the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The president himself said in an interview this week that his "biggest regret" is that the intelligence upon which the invasion was based wrongly concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Even Mr. Kristol said that Mr. Bush has done "a horrible job of explaining what he's done and what the choices were."

But he and Mr. Rove both maintained that while the initial occupation was mismanaged, the surge of troops begun in 2007 has placed the U.S. on the cusp of victory in Iraq.

"We've won the war," Mr. Kristol said.

Mr. Rove was incredulous at Mr. Jenkins' assertion that the Vietnam War was better managed than the Iraq war.

"We ended Vietnam in defeat, for which the families of 55,000 fallen heroes had reason to ask themselves if their sacrifices had been made in vain," Mr. Rove said.

Mr. Rove ended by saying that the deck was stacked against Mr. Bush from the beginning.

"To suggest he's not interested in ideas is a peculiar form of Bush hatred that causes people to lose their rational senses," Mr. Rove said. "This president has been on the receiving end of this kind of attitude from the moment he took office."

"I will defend the president," said Mr. Rove, who added that Mr. Bush will be vindicated "over the long scope of history."