It’s really pretty amazing to see the way that a consensus is forming, one that crosses the political spectrum, that the Bush administration has been an historic disaster. I was at a lunch this past weekend with a very, very conservative young law student, and even she could only muster a half-hearted defense of the administration and seemed to almost apologize for her support of it.

That’s all well and good, but the next battle will be over how to understand the Bush failure. You’re already seeing conservatives rushing to distance themselves from the administration and chalk up its manifest failtures to mere incompetence. But while that’s part of the story, it’s not most of it.

Enter Rick Perlstein and The Big Con to fill in the story. Rick’s written two books (the latter of which is forthcoming) documenting the rise of the modern conservative movement, from Goldwater through Nixon. He’s now writing a blog over at Campaign for America Future, in which he documents the ways in which the failures of the Bush administration are the failures of conservatism as an ideology and governing approach. Check out this opening post on E Coli Conservatives.