Five years after coining the famous 'axis' phrase, David Frum reflects on its shortcomings in an interview with Der Spiegel:

If you are looking for states that sponsor terrorism, I think there is no state in the world that has a worse record than Pakistan. And if you are concerned about the spread of extremist ideology, there is no state in the world that has a worse record than Saudi Arabia.

And, tellingly:

I would say that the story of the Bush Administration is the story of an administration caught halfway across the bridge; they did not want to face up to the magnitude of the problems. Its policies are premised on the assumption that we have a firm alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. If it had been possible in 2001 to address the problem of Saudi Arabia, maybe there never would have been an Iraq war.

So, from today's point of view, the Bush-record is hardly 'neo-conservative, argues Frum:

The story of the Bush Administration is a story of absorbing certain doctrines that are called "neo-conservative," but entrusting them to be executed by people who did not believe in those doctrines. And by always limiting the applications of those doctrines, so as not to touch on the really deep American commitments to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. If Bush were a neo-conservative, as everybody said, then his response to 9/11 would have been that this originated in an extremism that the government of Saudi Arabia has whipped up in order to protect itself from the consequences of its own corruption.

It's a fascinating interview and it reveals the gap between some foreign policy idealists and the pragmatists in the executive branch. As I have mentioned time and again, Bush never was a real visionary and the events of 9/11 forced him to assume the role of someone who could by the force of ideology materially change the Middle East. It was however never all that, and as Frum says, "he tried".

So Bush's lack of conviction - something manifest in Tony Blair when he compelled his skeptical Labour Party to go into Iraq - combined with the reluctance to lean more heavily on such players as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have created a questionable record. The net of that is, whatever the outcome of the Baghdad surge, the next occupant of the White House will have to somehow deal with an enlarged 'axis of evil'. And in that, even a Democrat would have to borrow far more from neo-conservative thought than Bush ever did.