perennial second place finishers newest dope---yup, another bush!
sure==he's smarter than palin, who the f ain't?
enyway, lookin like he's haided to the bat cave.
Lord have mercy!
only thing American folks got going is this:
he's affiliated with the party that big O--Obama, no less, beat twice, no less!!
sadly, the comedy continues....
November 1, 2014
Jeb Bush, to the Bat Cave!
“Several of our boys were pallbearers—maybe all of them—but the one I remember is Jeb,” Barbara Bush wrote in an account, in her memoirs, of her father-in-law’s funeral. Jeb was her second son:
He was a student at the University of Texas, nineteen years old, six feet four inches tall. Remember, this was the early 1970′s. He, of course, did not have a dark suit. He told me not to worry—he’d borrowed one. I should have kept worrying. It was black corduroy. He is the most handsome man (at least according to his mother) and that saved him. Otherwise, he would have looked like a card shark from Las Vegas
It is a quintessential Bush family moment: an establishment premise streaked with clumsy absurdity, with the participants mysteriously pleased about how it all looks—convinced that their fine qualities have saved them. This was October, 1972, during a period in which Jeb’s older brother, George W. Bush, was in something of a Vegas-card-shark phase. Their grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was being buried that day, had been a banker and Connecticut Senator; their father, George H. W. Bush, had made a good deal of money in the oil business and was serving as Ambassador to the United Nations. George W. had just been rejected by the University of Texas Law School and was drinking too much in all the wrong places, including behind the wheel of a car—maybe best not to remember that. The Bushes have always thought, to an extent that can, frankly, be puzzling for anyone who simply watches his speeches or assesses his record, that Jeb was their child of destiny. When Barbara Bush’s memoir came out, in 1994, after her husband’s one-term Presidency, the family thought that Jeb, not George, would be the next President Bush. The Bushes have never hidden their surprise that it didn’t work out that way, and now, according to multiple press reports, they have again become worked up about the idea that the man in the black corduroy suit can make it to the White House. But why should he?
“If it’s a ‘yes,’ I guess you go into the Bat Cave,” Jeb Bush said in a talk at Vanderbilt this week, when he was asked if he might run in 2016, according to the Tennessean. “Try to parse superhuman skills, which I will definitely need because I’m imperfect in every way.” He added, “I’m not like really freaking out about this decision, to be honest with you.” He has made himself a part of the midterms, campaigning for Republicans in Colorado, South Carolina, Florida, and elsewhere.
“I think it’s more than likely that he’s giving this a serious thought in moving forward,” George P. Bush, Jeb’s son, told ABC. George P. is running himself, for Texas Land Commissioner. “I, of course, was pushing him to run for President. He, of course, was saying, ‘I haven’t made up my mind.’ … I think he wants to be President,” George W. Bush told Fox News. “People are getting fired up about it—donors and people who have been around the political process for a while, people he’s known in Tallahassee, when he was governor. The family, we’re geared up either way,” Jeb, Jr., told the Times. “They’re like horses in the stall waiting for the gate to break,” a “family insider” told the paper. “They’re all jumping up and down.”
Why is it that so many people, in and out of the Republican Party, continue to bounce along with the Bush family? It is an article of faith with that crowd that Jeb is a natural leader. And yet his presence reminds one of Play-Doh left out of the container too long. One can’t quite decide whether he’s made of putty or chalk. He is given points both for being his father’s son and for not being his brother—which is somehow what passes for a meritocratic award. The odd idea is that, after one mediocre Bush Presidency and one failed one, it would be a matter of simple fairness to try a third. This can’t be what passes for equal opportunity in America.
Jeb was governor of Florida, so that’s one swing state down, but, other than that, his career has been episodic, a list of jobs with his father’s campaigns and with too many companies that seem, at least in part, to be most interested in his name and connections. (This included a stint with Lehman, before it went under.) His wife, Columba, was born in Mexico, and Jeb speaks Spanish and talks about immigration in terms of love: the idea is that this will get the Hispanic vote. Columba also doesn’t much like campaigning, and was once stopped by customs for not declaring that she’d bought almost twenty thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and jewelry in Paris. In other areas, Jeb could only be called a moderate in comparison to Ted Cruz—but that, perhaps, is the point.
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The Jeb Bush Bat Signal has been triggered, first, by Republican alarm at the lack of a candidate that the G.O.P. establishment views as entirely respectable. Cruz or Rand Paul? Chris Christie keeps yelling at everyone. We are hearing about Jeb for the same reason that people mention Romney with a perfectly straight face: the alternatives. Sane people or those not raised for it don’t seem to want to be politicians anymore. The G.O.P. may not like what it’s seeing, but it’s a bad sign if a major party just stops looking for new voices. The same holds for the Democrats.
And that is a second factor: Hillary Clinton and the sense that her candidacy might neutralize some of the strongest arguments against Jeb Bush. Those who would vote against either out of a belief that dynasties aren’t healthy for democracies, and that maybe four out of five Presidents in a row shouldn’t be named Clinton or Bush, would have no one to vote for. The Hillary camp might see the same comfort in Jeb’s presence. Allies of both have dismissed questions about the business and financial connections that they’ve made by talking about how old certain stories are, and how thoroughly they were vetted way back when, as if one can’t ask about transactions that have taken place since. Perhaps, with both on the ballot, there would be a non-aggression pact on questions of personal finance and money connections—and indiscreet relatives—in what is already looking to be an election cycle marked by historic levels of crass and unregulated spending. They may envision an orderly election, built around a simple question: Do you like Clinton years better than Bush ones? Those are not the only two kinds. The goal might be to fend off populists and malcontents, but the effect may be to engineer mass disillusion in politics. The public doesn’t look at the candidates, lined up for a debate, as proud parents do, just pleased if one is tall and handsome. They can also forget the whole thing, and walk away.
amy davidson
Amy Davidson is the executive editor of newyorker.com. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a column for its Web site, covering war, sports, and everything in between.
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