President Bush once remarked at a White House party that in the famously liberal enclave of San Francisco, his supporters were so rare that "you could probably fit them all in one room." He wasn't exaggerating, and he would do little to alter his standing. He never once set foot in San Francisco during his two terms, and he was hardly much chummier with California as a whole, the nation's most populous state and the world's eighth-largest economy.
President Bush once remarked at a White House party that in the famously liberal enclave of San Francisco, his supporters were so rare that "you could probably fit them all in one room."
He wasn't exaggerating, and he would do little to alter his standing. He never once set foot in San Francisco during his two terms, and he was hardly much chummier with California as a whole, the nation's most populous state and the world's eighth-largest economy.
The 43rd president's legacy in the Golden State, according to the unsparing assessment of Democratic consultant Phil Trounstine, is "zilch."
"He regarded California sort of like France - as a foreign entity for which he had nothing but scorn," said Trounstine. "Except for this: He did more damage to California than he ever did to France."
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With just 15 days remaining for the Bush administration, political observers note that the Republican president's chilly relationship with the decidedly blue state - a relationship that is poised to undergo a revolution with Democratic President-elect Barack Obama - means that many here will define the Bush legacy in California as forgettable at best.
"We always talk about California clout - and the clout was not there during the Bush years," said Bill Whalen, research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford. "George Bush was the only man to be elected and re-elected without carrying California. ... (He) found a way to circumvent California and those 55 electoral votes. It shook up the electoral map. He found a way to ... literally bypass San Francisco - and the rest of the state generally."
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