Two comments come to mind. First:

…who never sold his soul for political ends.

Since when is “creating a statesmanlike legacy” not a political end? It’s a major objective, IMHO, of all “professional” politicians, and it appears to be precisely what ol’ George has been striving for.

Second: My guess would be that George W. Bush may readily replace ol’ Jimmuh The Peanut as Official Ex-POTUS Negotiatator And Nobel Peace Prize Receiver sometime in the not-distant-enough future - which will accomplish just about as little as Jimmuh himself has managed.

What on earth makes you think they’re suddenly going to fall in love with Bush?

Oh, I don’t think there’s going to be any “falling in love” involved - and I’m not thinking about the ObamaNation that we are going to have to put up with for the next 4 - 8 years - but I do think that, if the ‘Publicans manage to work their way back into a sufficient measure of political control (and, despite what we see before us just now, I consider that entirely possible - even likely, if Hussein The One & Co. overreach to the extent we now expect), Bush will be a logical choice for a Carter-like role.

Bush is not very old, as ex-Presidents go - he’s likely to be around for a long time. Also, he shows signs of being even more desirous of creating that “statesman legacy” for himself than his dad has been. In addition, as badly as he has screwed things up overall, there’s still a fairly substantial segment of the ‘Publican Party that is willing to defend him - if the Party doesn’t change internally very much, but succeeds in regaining sufficient control of the power levers, they’ll “retread” Bush - and he’ll go along with it; it’ll feed his “image.”

The exact same situation existed for his father, and it did not come about.

I readily admit, I could be misreading here, but George W. and his dad don’t seem to be that much alike where this “legacy” thing is concerned - the elder Bush never appeared to care that much; he looks to me to have taken on that “joint” effort with Slick Willie through a genuine - if (IMHO) misguided - desire to create something good through diplomacy. George W., OTOH, looks to me like someone who very much wants to be publicly viewed as a valiant statesman - a “uniter, not a divider,” in his own words - if the Party regains sufficient power, I think he would push for a Jimmy-The-Peanut kind of thing and I think there could easily be support for that, in a largely-unaltered Party leadership.

…the right writes off its failures and moves on.

Mostly, yes - and I’m not advocating that they do otherwise (I don’t really care that much, I’m not a Republican anyway) - I’m not so sure that they will do that with George W.; there’re still quite a few in the Party (and some outside it, as well), I think, who would like to be able to justify Bush’s eight years.

I could be wrong, as I admit…