"What do you guys think? The Economist isn't exactly a leftist mouthpiece, is it? "

No, I wouldn't call it a butt monkey. It does offer a fairly unbias view. But there is more needed than simply not being a Butt monkey.
Before I go into details, I should first point out that this debate could have been much more meaningful if there actually was a real opposition candiate- the Dems have simply failed horribly in this regard.

"What is humble about announcing that you are trying to introduce democracy to the Middle East?"

Well, it's certainly is daring idea. But when Gandhi wanted to free India from England, no one would say Gandhi wasn't a humble man. A humble man knows he can fail at anything, but doesn't mean he lack vision and never tries to do something.

"Where is the compassion in his support for a federal ban on gay marriage, the limitations on stem-cell research or his other moves to accommodate the zealots of the Christian right? "

Where is the compassion in having Judges make political decisons- it's unfair to the Judges and unfair to be dictated to from Judges who weren't given this authority by the soveriegn power of the people.
As far as the stem-cell research- it's a lot noise about nothing.

"To be sure, the president has got some things wrong in foreign policy. He did not outright lie about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, but he misled the country about what was known and not known."

The only thing which Bush could have seemed misleading was stuff which was classifed- and all of this stuff was available to the Senate intelligence committee [comprised of Dems and Reps].
The idea that this was a coutroom which required "discovery" for the "defense" is just plan silly. It's not our job to prove that Saddam had WMD, it's Saddam's job to satisfy UN inspectors that he has and is fully complying with the cease fire agreement. Saddam failed to to this. He gets wacked. The body of the President argument was on sound intelligence- unlike Blair's questionable 45 min thing:)

"And, in a conflict where hearts and minds count for so much and where America's reputation has been so badly wounded, the president was unwilling to acknowledge the gravity of the abuses at Abu Ghraib."

Actually if anything, I think the President over emphasized Abu Ghraib- for political purposes. Instead of aggressively countering the Press's bullshit he took the safer route of letting the facts come out- which show the press got it all wrong- Abu Ghraib mess wasn't about getting intel from prisoners of war- it was soldiers "goofing off" with non combat prisoners [street criminals]. Now, of course this is improper and indicates lack of soldier disclipine- and is a serious matter. But it wasn't a cruel and crazy policy to get intel from POWs.

"That calamity warranted the resignation of Mr Rumsfeld. (The fact that a commission this week cleared him of direct responsibility for the torture is beside the point. He was the man in charge.)"

This might make some sense if we were the UK, but we are the US.

"The Economist's bigger disagreements with Mr Bush lie beyond the war on terror, in areas where Mr Bush's very aims are questionable or worse.

This president, despite impassioned avowals to the contrary, has been no champion of open international markets. He caved in to protectionist pressures and imposed tariffs on steel; he also signed an absurdly bad farm bill. His fiscal policy is nothing to boast about either. Here Mr Bush can plead with some justification that, as with foreign policy, he was ambushed by events: yes, he inherited a Clintonian budget surplus, but he also had to deal with the burst Clintonian bubble. A big swing into deficit was needed, he would argue, to avoid a much worse recession. Up to a point, Mr President. Unfortunately, the Bush deficits are not temporary. They stretch into the distance: the ten-year deficit is projected at $2.7 trillion, even after a lot of dodgy accounting. He cut taxes in the best conservative tradition, but spent vastly more as well. Mr Bush is a conservative who believes in big government."

Clinton's surplus was mostly "on paper" which evaporated with the bubble busting. Bush never "had" this surplus to work with- it went with the stock market decline. Clinton's surplus was about a "real" as Enron's "surplus"- though Enron was illegal hype and Clinton's was the legal and allowable type hype. You would think the Economist would know better.
As far as Bush being a conservative who believes in big govt, there is some truth to this. But the time the to cut govt is not when you are in a recession and you don't want to add to unemployment, and particularly when you are fighting tooth and nail with the Dems in the middle of a major war. The war simply trumps all other issues. If the Dems weren't in full campaign mode and calling Bush a liar and Hilter, then they might have been some room to be tougher with Congress.