According to Politico:

George W. Bush’s job approval rating as president has spiked to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. That’s one point higher than President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a poll taken the same week.

This is the first time Gallup asked Americans to retrospectively rate Bush’s job performance. And it was a stunning turnaround from his low point of 25 percent in November 2008. The 47 percent number is 13 points higher than the last Gallup poll taken before Bush left office in 2009 and the highest rating for him since before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Politico goes on to report:

Bush’s 47 percent approval rating also raises serious questions about the wisdom of the White House’s decision to relentlessly attack him in the months before the Democrats’ historic losses in the midterm elections. The president had kept warning a House Republican majority would return to Bush-era policies. But Obama’s message did little to galvanize the liberal base, and independents flocked to the GOP on Election Day.

Bush’s rebound gives some credence to what he has long said – that history will eventually judge his presidency.

I know enough to know that public opinion polls are merely snapshots in time, that they can change quickly, and that they certainly do not constitute a final judgment on events. (The surge was extremely unpopular before it began to work, it should be pointed out.) We are still a long way from having anything like a reasonable historical verdict on either the Bush or the Obama presidency. Still, the most recent Gallup findings are noteworthy. The Bush Comeback is coming along rather well. Like some of his predecessors, with the passage of time, Bush’s strengths and achievements are coming into sharper focus. I would say the same thing about his successor’s weaknesses and failures.