From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg:
I’ve enjoyed NRO for a long time, and you have been one of my favorite writers at NRO. However, I lost much respect for you after reading your column in today’s USA Today. Buyer’s remorse over President Bush by the “right wing” of the GOP? Are you really that remorseful that it wasn’t President Gore who was in office on 9/11/2001, or that it wasn’t President Kerry who took over the War on Terror midstream in 2004?
Get your priorities straight man, and be thankful that we haven’t been attacked again so that the “right wing” of the GOP can comfortably bitch about Bush’s heresies re: campaign finance reform or prescription drug entitlements. And if you and the rest of the ideologically pure “right wing” of the GOP keep up your whining, which is only giving the left and the media fresh ammo for November, we’ll get a chance to see how fast and how far a President Obama or Clinton can take us backward in Iraq and the War on Terror, not to mention entitlements, taxes, and judges.
I am a proud Republican, but I guess I have a lot to learn about the party and the various factions that comprise it. Silly me, I thought we promoted ourselves as a “big tent” party, compared to the Democrats who will loudly and profanely excise members from its midst for straying from the party line on abortion rights or failing in Iraq.
President Bush won’t be remembered for parting ways with the right on a few issues. History will remember him for keeping the US safe in a post-9/11 world, and if you hard-core ideologues shape up and help keep Obama or Clinton out of the White House by supporting McCain instead of trying to tear him (and now Bush) down, history just may also be able to credit Bush with reshaping the Middle East by injecting the antidote of liberty into that region, in which radical Islam festers and from which radical Islamic terrorism emanates. Wake-up call: Obama and Clinton will piss that potentiality away forever.
Seems VDH is the only one I’ll be able to stomach reading on NRO for a while, at least he still gets it. Please pass that on to him with my gratitude if you see him, thanks.

Me: There’s way too much table pounding here. First, buyer’s remorse can apply to nominating Bush in 2000. I agree entirely that Bush was preferable to Gore, just as I agree today that McCain would be infinitely preferable to Clinton or Obama. Second, buyer’s remorse need not be fully rational, remorse is an emotional response after all. Third, I really don’t want to re-open this argument right now, but it seems to me an open question whether — given the hindsight of knowing 9/11 was coming — Bush was the best candidate from that 2000 field.