These orations come to us as the lucubrations of a solitary wise man, grappling with American history, with race, with fate and freedom.

Time returns in the peroration, but in a different way: as an expression, Lincoln-like, of humility.

Theories of history are always theories of the future, and Presidents’ theories of history often involve occult, oracular communications with the future. George W. Bush, as the disaster of his presidency wore on, became a desperate reader of biographies. When Bush said “history will judge,” history was a kindly future biographer who would rescue him from the condemnation of every historian of the present. As time wore on, his speeches amounted to little more than clumsy, frantic prayers to that future pardoner. When Bush called himself “the decider” and called his memoir Decision Points, he was not just arrogating power to himself or speaking businessman-ese; he was suggesting that history consists of individual decisions, a leader alone in a room with limited options, a red pill and a blue pill, time marching mechanically on. With such a narrow view of history, and such a record of terrible decisions, it’s not surprising that decisiveness was his only remaining virtue.