When a leader can actually knock his own country out of superpower status in just a 5 year time frame... that's a truly historical achievement. As DU's
Virginia Dare pointed out in a different thread, China it now telling the US to "
shut up" about our concerns over their current military expansion. Meanwhile Iran is thumbing its nose at us, our allies are deserting us, a ragtag bunch of bandits are confounding us in Iraq, thereby tying down our entire military strike capacity, Israel keeps slipping off its leash, South America is turning left faster than Ricky Bobby in the home stretch, and our intelligence services can't even catch a low-tech, cave-dwelling semi-cripple hooked up to a dialysis machine hiding in a country we conquered five years ago.
Welcome to Mr Bush's America!
How many other world leaders have ever sunk their nation's stock so far so fast? Nero couldn't do that--the Roman Empire survived his corrupt regime more or less unaltered in raw power. Chamberlain, maybe, altho the British Empire was already in wane. Bush inherited a nation at the apex of its world power status--loved, respected, and feared by all the right people the world over. The Ming dynasty emperors certainly navigated the kingdom into decay down from being a superpower--but the decline took a couple of centuries and they had the Mongols to push them over.
The only true historical parallel I can think of is Darius of Persia. His obsession with punishing the marginal Greek city states on the periphery of his empire brought about his country's doom. Thank goodness the Muslim fanatics we face are politically incapable of producing an Alexander the Great. But just in case, maybe I'll go and buy my daughter a burkha.