Bush has become a toxic adjective. The mere mention of the term Bush tax cuts, like Bush foreign policy, is enough to send even mild-mannered Americans to their respective ideological battle stations. Being reflexively and absolutely anti-Bush has made many otherwise sophisticated minds (particularly along the nation's coasts) as dogmatic and simplistic as, well, George Bush.

Now, about those tax cuts. Bush may be taking a one-way flight out of Andrews Air Force Base in January, but he has mischievously ensured that the next administration and the next Congress will have to relive his first term as they debate whether or not to extend the series of tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003—Bush's key domestic legacy—which are set to expire in 2010. Most presidents leave their successor a letter in the desk drawer, but Bush is leaving behind a fiscal time bomb.

Tax fights have become ossified between left ("the rich are getting richer!") and right ("the rich are paying an increasing share of the tax burden!") with little regard to broader economic policy. Both parties should come out of their trenches and acknowledge that the Bush tax cuts should not be treated as an all-or-nothing monolith. The reality is that the country can afford neither to extend all the cuts (a nonstarter—if relief from the alternative minimum tax is factored in, the cost is estimated at $3.6 trillion over the next decade) nor to let them all lapse.

The reduced marginal income-tax rates for the middle class and lower-wage earners will surely be extended, but the wealthiest Americans had no business having their top rates cut—from 39.6 to 35 percent—in the first place. If memory serves us, the wealthy did just fine under the rates in place during the Clinton years. Indeed, the fact that income inequality widened more during that period than it has in this decade provides politicians with a cautionary tale on exaggerating the social-engineering power of tax policy.

The reduction of most capital-gains and dividend taxes to 15 percent, on the other hand, stimulates investment and saving by improving investors' returns and should remain in place. While we reject the absolutist argument that all levies on investment returns amount to the evil of double taxation, we do believe it makes sense, as plenty of left-leaning European nations have recognized, to tax capital at a lower rate.

Then there is the fabled "death tax." The country needs to move beyond the tiresome battle over how much to tax a tiny portion of all estates—about 12,600 of them a year under the current policy, at rates that are practically extortionate. It would make far more sense to treat inherited wealth the same as investment income and tax it as such, at the 15 percent capital-gains rate. The tax base could then be expanded to boost revenue, by including all estates in excess of $1 million.

We know, we know. It's more fun to adopt a Taliban-like fundamentalism in supporting or opposing all things Bush. But once the man leaves, we have to let go and start assessing ideas on their merits.