Oh well

It strikes me that the Bush administration as a "lame duck" administration is a slightly more decent one. They batted away that absurd gas tax holiday, oppose the farm bill in its current incarnation, and have come clean with government reports on global warming. Of course many manifestations of their misguided ideologies are still offensive to me (taxes, Iran, GI bill, etc.).

I think an attractive hypothesis is that this new-found decency is due to the fact they are no longer running for anything, and as such, can simply govern. To me, the most comprehensive explanation for their policies in the past is that they believed all policy was political; an idea proffered by John Dilulio, Scott McClellan, and others. So without all the political calculations nowadays, they are left to approach issues with reason and honesty.