I continue to believe that his biggest problem is the name-Bush. What's in a name? In this case, a hell of a lot.
The name ironically helped George W. Bush in 1999 as for a couple of years after he put his name out there people thought his father was running. This propelled him to an early lead in the polls and set him up as the best candidate to beat Gore.
You could argue that without the name W wouldn't have won.
There's' an old saying 'That's my name, don't wear it out.'
Alas, this is what W did to the Bush name. It was an extremely valuable asset in 2000-again, I argue it's why he won-and it's an extremely costly liability to his younger brother today, as W was and remains so unpopular.
This might explain in part Jeb's much more mediocre poll numbers till now. I don't think he ever gets over the W thing. As Americans have such bad memories of the Bush years, how can Jeb show that he's his own man and that his policies would be different?
Turns out he's not exactly trying very hard to do this:
Jeb Bush says that he would have authorized the 2003 war in Iraq — just like his brother did.
The name ironically helped George W. Bush in 1999 as for a couple of years after he put his name out there people thought his father was running. This propelled him to an early lead in the polls and set him up as the best candidate to beat Gore.
You could argue that without the name W wouldn't have won.
There's' an old saying 'That's my name, don't wear it out.'
Alas, this is what W did to the Bush name. It was an extremely valuable asset in 2000-again, I argue it's why he won-and it's an extremely costly liability to his younger brother today, as W was and remains so unpopular.
This might explain in part Jeb's much more mediocre poll numbers till now. I don't think he ever gets over the W thing. As Americans have such bad memories of the Bush years, how can Jeb show that he's his own man and that his policies would be different?
Turns out he's not exactly trying very hard to do this:
Jeb Bush says that he would have authorized the 2003 war in Iraq — just like his brother did.
“I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody,” the former Florida governor told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Saturday after delivering the commencement address at Liberty University in Virginia. “And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”
"Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush and likely 2016 presidential candidate, said mistakes were made in not securing the country."
“By the way, guess who thinks that those mistakes took place as well? George W. Bush,” Jeb Bush said. “Yes, I mean, so just for the news flash to the world, if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those.”
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/jeb-bush-i-would-have-authorized-the-war-in-iraq-118635872181.html
I just don't think this is going to be a winning campaign: there's no daylight between me and my big brother, George W. Bush.
We know the GOPers are going to make this a referendum on Obama but Jeb's presence-and I do think he's going to win the GOP nomination-are going to make it a contest between the Obama Administration and the George W. Bush Administration, which is a fight Democrats should relish.
Listen, on a human level I get it that he loves his brother and wants to try to do the impossible and repair his image-but this desire is mutually exclusive with the hope of actually winning this election. The more the GOP tries to pin Obama on Hillary she should pin W on Jeb.
It seems that Jeb isn't going to exactly make this difficult as he is determined to make this election a vindication of W.
No comments:
Post a Comment