Is this the equivalent of the New York Times throwing a great big shoe at President Bush on his way out of office? You may have noticed the 5000 word article on the front page of yesterday's Sunday paper (side note: the Times should publish some sort of collection of the 5000 word Sunday pieces that inevitably piss the GOP off). In short, the piece basically details how the "philosophy" promoted by Bush is at the root of the housing crisis which itself is at the core of the economic crisis (they are not the first to make this point, by the way).

Well, the White House did not like that one bit(!) issuing not one but two responses (read them in full at FishbowlDC) the first of which accuses the Times of "gross negligence" and points out that actually there are plenty of other people to blame for this mess (i.e. Congress) and the second of which takes the Times to task over its "three most egregious claims," pointing out, among other things, which Dems ignored the President's so-called warnings.

Of course there's no way the White House couldn't have responded to such an article — on the podcast this morning Patrick Gavin points out that the White House is in full force legacy building mode (as evidenced by Sunday morning appearances by both Condi and Cheney). However one has a hard time imagining that a President leaving office during the worst economic downturn in close to 70 years, combined with a badly thought out war, has much of a leg to stand on in terms of legacy, so perhaps the White House's thorough rebuttal is intended more for the edification of future historians than that of the Sunday Times readership.