WASHINGTON
— JEB, dragging his wilted exclamation point around, is so boring that
it’s hard to focus on the epic nature of his battle.
Not
the battle against Donald Trump, although his beat-down by Trump is
garishly entertaining. I’m talking about the Brooks Brothers “Game of
Thrones” family tangle.
As
much as Poppy Bush scoffs at “the D-word,” as he calls any reference to
dynasty, the Bushes do consider themselves an American royal family.
They have always pretty much divided the world into Bushes and the help.
The patriarch once sent me a funny satire referring to himself and
Barbara as the Old King and Queen, W. as King George of Crawford and Jeb
as the Earl of Tallahassee.
At
91, 41 is living to see Jebbie become president. He is mystified by a
world in which Trump, whom he considers a clown, could dethrone the
crown prince.
Jeb
said in New Hampshire that Poppy is prone to throw his shoe at the TV
when Trump comes on. Fortunately, the former president always has very
stylish socks.
Some
of Jeb’s disillusioned donors are hanging on just because they can’t
bear to shatter the old man’s illusions. How can America be rewarding
the wrong dynasty — Little Rock over Kennebunkport?
As Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer recently wrote
in The Times, Poppy and Bush retainers like John Sununu are bewildered
by a conservative electorate that rejects Republican primogeniture,
prefers snark to substance and embraces an extremely weird brain surgeon
and an extravagantly wild reality show star.
When
the Bushes had to stick a shiv in the ribs of their foes, they behaved
like gentlemen and outsourced it to henchmen. They can’t fathom a world
where that vulgarian Trump is doing his own dirty work.
Trump
has gotten into Jeb’s head, making Jeb so petulant he declared he had
“a lot of really cool things” he could be doing instead, when we all
know he doesn’t.
For Bushworld, this was the election where the Cain and Abel drama of W. and Jeb would finally have a happy ending.
I
covered the Jeb and Junior sibling smashdown from the start. In 1993, I
went on the road to watch Jeb run for governor in Florida and W. run
for governor in Texas.
Barbara
had blurted out to W. that he shouldn’t run because he couldn’t win.
And when I talked to Jeb, he seemed annoyed that his older brother had
jumped into the race in Texas because it turned it into “a People
magazine story.”
But
W. had spent his rowdy 20's and 30's living with the unpleasant fact that
even though he was the oldest, his parents assumed Jeb had the bright
political future. At 47, with his drinking days behind him and Laura
beside him, he was ready to cash in on the family name and money and
make his move.
It
was soon clear to me that the Good Son was not as scintillating a
campaigner as the Prodigal Son. W. didn’t know the issues and he had a
spiteful side, but he was the one with the crackle.
When
Jeb came up with a line on the trail in Florida that worked, W. just
swiped it. When Jeb said, “I am running for governor not because I am
George and Barbara Bush’s son; I am running because I am George P. and
Noelle and Jeb’s father,” W. began saying: “I am not running for
governor because I am George Bush’s son. I am running because I am Jenna
and Barbara’s father.” Karl Rove laughed about the shoplifting.
Jeb
was the image of his mother, especially when he smiled, but his
pragmatic political temperament was more like his father’s, even though
he never had his dad’s manic “ants on a hot pan” energy. W. looked like
his father but got his acerbic streak from his mother.
On
election night, W. was steamed that his father seemed more upset by
Jeb’s loss than excited by his oldest son’s win. Not only did W. shock
his family by making it to the Oval Office before Jeb. In the tie
election, Jeb had to be prodded into helping his brother snatch Florida
away from Al Gore.
This was going to be the year that settled sibling scores. Jeb would get what his parents considered his birthright.
Even
though the brothers are not particularly close, and W.’s tragic over-involvement in the Middle East and tragic under-involvement in
Katrina did not make him a campaign asset, somehow Jeb kept wrapping
himself around W.’s axle — and his Axis of Evil.
When
Jeb was first asked if it had been a good idea to invade Iraq, he gave
four different answers. Then he said he wouldn’t rule out torture and
thought getting rid of Saddam was “a pretty good deal.” And he couldn’t
stop bragging about how his brother kept America safe, even though Trump
correctly noted that W. was not on the ball leading up to 9/11. And, of
course, W.’s two misbegotten wars have been recruiting boons for
terrorist fiends.
Jeb
explained away his shambling, shrinking campaign by saying he was a
doer, not a performer. But the main thing he was doing was helping to
rehabilitate his brother’s pockmarked reputation.
W.
headlined a fund-raiser at a Georgetown home Thursday night. When he
came out, a TMZ camera captured him jovially signing autographs for
people waiting on the street and calling out as he drove away, “Don’t
put that on eBay.”
On
Friday morning, the chatterers were comparing the stiff Jeb to the
loosey-goosey W., gushing with the mistaken cliché that W. is
comfortable in his own skin. It was the ultimate vindication for W. His
parents had been wrong all along. Jeb wasn’t the Natural on the trail.
He was.
Some
Jeb! campaign officials think he should “kiss off Iowa,” as one put it,
where he’s flatlining, and put the emphasis on New Hampshire, setting
the stage for South Carolina. “That’s what 41 did when Bob Dole was
winning Iowa,” said one family friend. The Bushworld veterans think that
someone gave Jeb bad advice about trying to put his protégé Marco Rubio
in his place at the debate.
“It looked out of character for him,” one said. “He looked like he was a little lost when Marco came back at him.”
Jeb’s loyalists are urging reporters to point out, as one asserted, that Trump would be “a catastrophe for the country.”
They also think Jeb has to be more self-deprecating, because he has no choice, and stress his Latino support.
Before
the debate debacle, the joyless candidate had been doubling down on his
promise to be joyful, proclaiming on NewsmaxTV, “I’m having a blast”
and “I’m in phenomenal shape for an old 62 year old guy. In fact, I
think we ought to have five-hour debates.”
But
this campaign has been defined by Trump parachuting in, like an Elvis
impersonator in Vegas, and disrupting the royal coronation. Jeb had been
out of politics for eight years and he strolled back, mistakenly
assuming that the vassals were waiting eagerly to hail him.
With Trump belittling him for being low energy and running to Mommy and Daddy for help, Jeb realized he was in a new world.
His
brother’s muscle-bound presidency led to Barack Obama and the diffident
Obama led to a new brand of furious, Tea Party-infused Republicans.
While
Jeb was offstage, the whole party and political environment had passed
him by. He came back looking very ’90's. He’s talking about pragmatic
government at a time when the drivers in his party are talking about
tearing it down.
Jeb
is trapped in a nightmarish déjà vu. Once he was cast as the wonky one
while his brother, the sparky one, slipped ahead. Now Jeb is cast as the
wonky one while Marco, the sparky one, slips ahead.
Jeb got confused. He thought he was still in an era when people had to pay their dues.
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