When the election cycle started, I railed against Jeb Bush. The thought of having another Bush in the White House was almost as bad as the idea of having another Clinton in the White House. The only difference is that Jeb would likely have been the best Bush while Hillary would be the worse of the two Clintons.
After watching the debate the other night, I realized that I no longer want to rail against Jeb Bush. I pity him. As fellow candidate Marco Rubio acutely pointed out, Bush was only attacking him about his voting record in the Senate because somebody advised him that he had to. The attack was feeble and the hammer that Rubio had prepared for the anticipated attack was as powerful as if Thor was doing the swinging.
Jeb Bush needed to hit Rubio hard and his attempt ended up making Rubio one of the big winners of the night. He gift-wrapped an outlet for Rubio to diffuse his voting record controversy and effectively ended his own chances of winning the GOP nomination.
The sad part is that in his political demise, I actually started liking Bush. The plans that he has outlined aren’t nearly as moderate as I had anticipated and his grasp of what the country needs in order to heal from two failed Obama terms is strong. Outside of a weak tax plan, he seems to have much better ideas than his father and exponentially better ideas than his brother. He truly wants to be President in order to help the country. Rubio, on the other hand, seems to fall into the category of wanting to be President for the sake of wanting to be President. His similarities to 20078 Senator and candidate Barack Obama are striking.
Jeb would love to be in the White House, but it’s clear that he hates being on the campaign trail. He hates debates. He hates answering tough questions. He hates criticism of his brother. He hates having to be careful about everything he says.
He hates running for President.
As RedState editor Erick Erickson said on RealClearPolitics:
Jeb Bush Needs to Reconsider his candidacy Erick Erickson https://t.co/2uQBkIgLmQ
— Rubio Republicanism (@Texas4Rubio) October 30, 2015
Watching the exchange, it was like hearing Darth Vader saying, “now, I am the master,” right before striking down his former Jedi teacher.
Sadly, Bush might have been a better President than we expected had he been given the chance. Now, those chances are about as feeble as his attack on Rubio.