gracchusdixit

Just a few months ago, it was all but assumed that Jeb Bush was the odds-on favorite to become the next Republican Presidential nominee.  He was the clear front-runner in a comedically crowded field, and all the stars were lined up in his favor.  He had been a popular and passably successful governor of Florida.  He was judged to be a more skillful and articulate politician than his ham-fisted and frequently incoherent brother George.  And he possessed all the advantages of the Bush name and connections, thanks to which he was the darling of the Republican establishment, able to raise money faster than King Midas once turned dross into gold.

For all these reasons, Jeb Bush seemed unstoppable.

Then, the tables turned.  Donald Trump swept into the race like a sudden thunderstorm and began, as the saying goes, to suck up all the oxygen in the room.  Before long, he had shoved other contenders, Bush most of all, into a rhetorical corner from which they were unable to escape.  Having topped the national polls for months, Jeb Bush’s standing fell like the proverbial stone.

Thus it was that last night’s Republican debate was thought by many to be Bush’s last chance to salvage a floundering campaign.  If that was the case, then the Bush ship has piled up on the rocks.  Not only did the candidate fail to rise to the opportunity the debate provided, he squandered it.

It is tempting—and not entirely inaccurate—to attribute Jeb Bush’s problems to the devastation wreaked by the Trump whirlwind and the more general tumult among the so-called Republican “base,” which seems ready to embrace almost anyone—including quiet lunatics like Ben Carson or loud-mouthed corporate criminals like Carly Fiorina—rather than established politicians.

Bush’s problems, however, go further.  They extend to the man himself.

To the surprise of nearly everyone, Jeb Bush has turned out to be a simply terrible candidate: uncertain and awkward on the stump, given to making gaffes, unable to communicate a consistent or convincing political philosophy.  Why this has turned out to be the case is anyone’s guess.  But at least three possibilities come to mind.

One is that Jeb Bush is a child of privilege, whose path to prominence was paved by others.  As a member of one of our country’s oldest families and most enduring political dynasties, he attended elite schools, sailed into politics on the strength of his name, and thereafter earned a living—if you can call it that—by sitting on a dozen corporate boards and collecting the fees. Such people are used to getting their way.  It isn’t entirely surprising, therefore, that he handles adversity badly, answers questions with prickly irritation, and greets criticism with a peevish scowl.  Matched up with a bar-room brawler like Donald Trump, Jeb Bush the  prep-school kid seems to punch below his weight.

Another possibility is that Bush is actually ill-prepared for the task that he has set himself.  Some have observed that he’s been out of politics for a decade, suggesting that he may simply be “out of practice”.  Few, however, have noted the more consequential fact that Jeb Bush didn’t have that much practice to begin with.  He came to politics late in life, and, apart from his stint as governor of Florida, has held no other elective office.  Next to his father, who served two terms in the House of Representatives, headed up the CIA, was picked by Ronald Reagan to be Vice President, and then succeeded Reagan as President, son Jeb looks like a rank amateur.

A third, more consequential, possibility is that Jeb Bush is not the “moderate” conservative he is imagined to be, which leaves him without a distinguishing purpose or a political identity.

If Jeb Bush were truly “moderate,” he should by now have been able to articulate a coherent response to Donald Trump’s immigrant-bashing nativism, Ben Carson’s evangelical lunacy, and Ted Cruz’s tea party demagoguery.  That he has been unable to do so exposes him for what he actually is: no less crazy than the crazies he opposes.

If you require any further proof of this, merely look at Jeb’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a., “Obamacare.”  Its purported aim is to reduce the outrageous cost of health care.  It would do so, however, not by reducing costs but by reducing benefits, particularly for the poor, the old, and the ill.  Bush’s idea of health care reform is Dickensian: health care for the wealthy and the already healthy at the expense of those who are neither.

This extremism really shouldn’t surprise us.  It was Governor Jeb Bush, let us not forget, who decided to defy the courts of both Florida and the United States by sending state marshals to prevent Terry Schiavo from being allowed to die after ten years in a  vegetative coma—all in the name of the “sanctity of life”.

None of this is the portrait of a “moderate Republican”.  And if Jeb Bush isn’t a “moderate Republican,” why would anyone, Republican or Democrat, vote for him?  After last night’s debate, the answer seems to be clear:  they won’t.