For Bush, McCain and Obama, the freedom agenda is so powerful because it is so American. The United States cannot help being the Sally Field of great powers, always wondering and working to be sure the rest of the world really, really likes us. Can anyone imagine Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Hu Jintao or French President Nicolas Sarkozy staring out of the helicopter and worrying whether the desperate faces in Darfur or Baghdad see their countries as beacons of hope? Democrats and Republicans may attack each other on vital specifics, but they agree on the helicopter big picture. As one Bush official noted, "There is something vaguely amusing talking to the Democratic national-security types and the Republican national-security types who want to draw very great distinctions. But the fact of the matter is they don't disagree that much. They're members of the same club. They go to the same watering holes, they attend the same conferences, they write for the same magazines." It is telling that the only major presidential candidate of either party to repudiate the freedom agenda was Republican Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). He failed to win a single primary contest.

George W. Bush will not be judged kindly by history. But make no mistake: his freedom agenda will endure in the next administration and beyond.

Amy Zegart is an associate professor at UCLA's School of Public Affairs. She is also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, as well as a fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations.

¹Albright again defended Clinton's interventions from the 1990s, bemoaned the resilience of sovereignty, criticized the Iraq War and defended the idea of using troops to promote human rights in a June 11, 2008, New York Times op-ed, "The End of Intervention."