While President Bush's farewell tour of friendly venues generates more criticism of his eight-year White House tenure, his loyal secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, not surprisingly says his legacy should be left to history to decide.

In a Sunday interview on CBS News, she mused that it won't be long before Americans "start to thank this president for what he's done," and that "he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time."

Unfortunately for Bush, however, in this era of the 24/7 news cycle and the writing of instant history, American public opinion doesn't await the scholarly assessment of professional historians. Instead, it is strongly shaped by the flood of print and television commentary based on contemporary readings, as well as instant public viewing of events as they unfold on TV and the Internet.

Rice argued that the conduct of American foreign policy is not "a popularity contest," and that the Bush administration should be judged not by "today's headlines" but by the foundation it has set down "for history's judgment."

Reminded by CBS News reporter Rita Braver that Bush has been labeled by some historians one of the worst presidents in recent history, Rice called the accusation "ridiculous." She questioned the making of "historical judgments before an administration is . . . even out of office" and before the effects of Bush's decisions on the future of the Middle East can be assessed.

The departing secretary of state also dismissed the suggestion that the 2008 presidential election, in which Republican nominee John McCain lost, was a kind of referendum on Bush's policies. "This president had two terms," she told Braver. "That's all he gets is two terms . . . and he was re-elected. . . . I'm not going to talk about popularity polls."

Rice noted that good historians are still writing books about George Washington and Harry Truman, seeming to imply with the mention of the latter, whose popularity in the polls was low when he left office, that history was much kinder to him with the passing of time.

The penchant of the American news media to make what many politicians deplore as premature judgments of them has been a longtime lament of prominent figures in both parties. The case was made most emphatically by the late Vice President Spiro Agnew, who won national acclaim — and censure — in 1969 for attacks on "instant analysis" by television commentators of a speech by President Richard Nixon defending his Vietnam War policies.

In a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, to which Agnew's staff alerted the networks to assure wide coverage, he castigated "instant analysis and querulous criticism" by "a small band of network commentators and self-appointed analysts, the majority of whom expressed in one way or another their hostility to what he had to say."

Agnew acknowledged their right to disagree with Nixon but argued that the president "also had the right to communicate to the people," who in turn had the right to make up their own minds "without having the president's words and thought characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested."

And he asked: "What do Americans know of the men who wield this power? . . . Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny and close fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government?"

The critical Bush judgment of some historians may be considered instant analysis in terms of historical appraisal, but those who have assessed him harshly have not based their view on one speech just delivered. They have had eight years to make their judgment of a presidency that has left the country mired in two wars and a financial crisis not seen since the Great Depression.

The low opinion of Harry Truman was later countered by, among other things, the immense success of the Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe. Rice in the CBS interview expressed confidence that when the final chapters are written on the Middle East, today's public opinion of Bush also will climb. But right now, that optimistic view looks like very wishful thinking.

Jules Witcover's latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, "Very Strange Bedfellows," has just been published by Public Affairs Press. Reach him at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.