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One commentator, at least, sees a silver lining for President Bush in the financial crisis: "Now this will be the president's lasting legacy! It will cover up all the things that were going to be his legacy! I mean, just think of Iraq, torture, wiretapping, Katrina as little paint drips on the floor of his presidency. This financial disaster is like painting the whole floor! Now I don't see any mistakes. It really freshens the place up."

In his mocking way, faux-conservative comedian Stephen Colbert reflects the widespread view that the recent meltdown on Wall Street will be the final nail in the coffin of Bush's reputation as one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. For his many critics on the left, the crisis bolsters their conviction that Bush was blinded by ideology or complicit in fraud by Wall Street fat cats, and that he was typically disengaged as the problems brewed throughout 2008. Critics on the right are furious over what they see as grandiose plans to intervene in the private sector -- plans that reek of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Even with the recent improvement in Iraq's security, Bush's approval rating in some polls has plumbed depths reached not even by President Nixon.

The presidential candidates aren't giving Bush a break either. As expected, Democrat Barack Obama blames Bush fully for the financial crisis and says it shows how badly Republican rule has hurt Americans. Republican John McCain, presenting himself as an outsider, also condemns Bush's stewardship of the economy, and it is McCain, not Obama, who has fanned populist sentiment against Bush's rescue plan for the banking sector.

But there are some good reasons to question whether this judgment will stand. To begin with, presidential historians say it is foolhardy to judge the ultimate reputation of a president soon after he leaves office, let alone while he is still in power, and it usually takes decades for history to reach a verdict on a president's acts. More important, Bush's role in the financial crisis is still evolving. And whatever public opinion is about Bush's affinity for Wall Street, his administration's hands-off approach to regulating finance reflects a 25-year consensus shared by the previous, Democratic administration. Finally, aspects of Bush's handling of this crisis make his actions different from earlier ones during his presidency -- and particularly different from what his critics call the hallmarks of his biggest mistakes.

Still, one fact is undeniable: Bush, whose dismal approval ratings had been creeping up since June, became more unpopular than ever when Wall Street tanked in September. His previous low of 28 percent in June, according to the Gallup Poll, improved to 33 percent in August, reflecting the public's greater optimism about Iraq and the unexpectedly strong growth in the economy during the first half of 2008, according to Gallup. But after the financial crisis arrived, the president's approval rating dropped to 27 percent in late September, and to 25 percent on October 5. The latter is only 1-percentage point higher than President Nixon's low of 24 percent, reached shortly before he resigned, and 3 points above President Truman's low of 22 percent.

Truman, however, is Exhibit A for presidential historian Fred Greenstein, who scoffs at the suggestion that is possible now to assess how history will judge Bush or his legacy as an economic leader. Greenstein, who teaches at Princeton University, noted that Truman achieved his record in 1952, after labor disputes in the steel industry led the president to nationalize some companies. It was a deeply unpopular action at the time (and the Supreme Court eventually overturned it) but is now mostly a footnote to Truman's legacy as a successful leader.

Bush has himself invoked Truman on the matter of how history will ultimately judge him, and Greenstein said it could well be that the Achilles' heel of Bush's popularity -- Iraq -- will in time be considered a correct and brave stance.

For an analog on the economy, consider the presidency of Bush's father. Judged the most popular president to date following the successful Persian Gulf War, George H.W. Bush saw his 89 percent approval rating plummet to 29 percent in July 1992, after a recession and slow recovery pushed the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent. Bush resisted calls for a massive economic stimulus that would have undone the bipartisan budget deficit deal reached in 1990, and he preached patience. The public viewed him as unconcerned about Americans' economic woes, and Bush himself blamed this perception for his loss to Bill Clinton in the November election.

Since then, some historians say that the elder Bush's restraint on the economy helped make the 1991 recession arguably the mildest in U.S. history. Stephen Hess, a presidential historian at the Brookings Institution, said that it was impossible then to judge Bush's stewardship on the economy, and perhaps even harder to judge the same for his son. By the time the elder Bush left office in 1993, the economic recovery was 14 months old. The current slump is unlikely to recede much if at all before George W. leaves office, Hess said.

Another factor may help improve Bush's legacy on the financial crisis, based on his sharply different approaches to governing at different times. The "Bad Bush" depicted in many assessments of his presidency is rigid, spurns alliances, is uninterested in complex policy debates, and ignores matters beyond what he views as the focus of his presidency -- winning the war on terrorism. This was the Bush who left the United States more isolated internationally, who poisoned relations with Democrats in Congress, who rejected compromise on Social Security reform and many other initiatives, and who is judged so harshly on his handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina. It may be that Bush's detached air in August and into September, when he left most of the public statements about the crisis to subordinates, will render this another Bad Bush moment.

The "Good Bush," on the other hand, has been much more in evidence in the past two years -- less rigid, less partisan, less blinded by limited priorities, and more prepared to tackle emerging problems. This is the Bush that appeared early in his first term when he achieved a bipartisan education reform plan and, more recently, led international efforts on Iran, Palestinian statehood, North Korea, and, belatedly, global warming.

Since becoming fully engaged on the financial crisis in September, the president has acted much more like the Good Bush. When it became clear that investors were doubting his commitment to a rescue, he delivered a sobering, televised prime-time address to explain how the crisis developed. Since then, he has continued to take the lead in introducing new initiatives and lobbying for support. When his own party's lawmakers threatened to scuttle the rescue as an affront to conservative principles, Bush threw his lot in with the Democrats and accepted many of their suggestions while cajoling House Republicans to drop their opposition. When foreign governments balked at joining the U.S. rescue, he pressed for international coordination and reached greater unity with European leaders than in years.

And when investors doubted the mortgage-security-focused strategy behind his hard-won $700 billion rescue plan, Bush dropped it and adopted a bank-centered approach advanced by his European counterparts. Hess even compared Bush to FDR, not in the scope of the rescue plan, but in his willingness to try different approaches and start over when something isn't working.

Greenstein agreed that Bush seems less stubborn and ideologically rigid in his handling of the crisis, but views this as simple pragmatism. When Bush can afford to spurn cooperation and compromise, he does -- but that isn't the case now, Greenstein said.

Hess noted that some of Roosevelt's radical interventions in the economy were initially unpopular but became part of his legacy. By design or not, Bush has embraced compromise and flexibility in his approach to the current crisis, and this pragmatism might improve the verdict on his presidency once the economy improves.