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Et tu, Jeb?

Arkady

Arkady

President
When GW Bush first emerged as the presumptive nominee in 2000, I was a bit disappointed for his brother, Jeb (not Neil, the disgraced S&L guy). Jeb seemed like the much smarter and more accomplished member of the family, and he didn't seem as eager to stoop to the level of the evangelical conservatives. I figured GW Bush was going to poison his brother's chances, either by losing (which would have caused conservatives to shy from the family, given that GHW Bush was already a single-termer), or by winning and being a horrible president.

Turns out, GW Bush was an even more horrible president than I could have imagined, and it does seem to have hurt Jeb's hopes of ever being president. But maybe that's just as well. Jeb recently tweeted about the US moving the Vatican embassy into the same building as the Italian embassy. His tweet was designed to imply it was retaliation for Catholic groups wanting some exemptions from Affordable Care rules. Jeb is too smart to believe for even a moment that's what it was. The move was driven by a desire to save money and to make the facility more secure -- two things Republicans have been pretending to care about a lot lately. The move also puts the facility a bit closer to the Vatican, so there's that side advantage. But Jeb wasn't going to let a little common sense stand between him and stoking religious sentiment for a possible 2016 run. Thus, the concern-troll tweet.

As scandals go, I'll admit this one is a small one. Nearly all politicians will stoop to that kind of politically convenient feigned idiocy from time to time, when they think they can score some free points. But it's grating in the wake of the right-wing second-guessing about Benghazi and the right-wing freak outs about the deficit. The Obama administration finds a way to save money, improve the security of our diplomats, AND move one of our diplomatic facilities to a more convenient spot and the Republicans STILL freak out. If Obama were to find a way to walk on water, Republicans would just attack him about all the jobs it was going to cost in the boating industry.
 
If Jeb Bush is delusional enough to believe that "Theodore Hoover, the brother of Herbert, could have been the 1940 Republican Nominee for President and won".....

he's too crazy to ever be President.
 
i'm replying to your thread because i feel sorry that you got no responses.

but what motivated you to pick on jeb today? did he do something to get himself in the news? or is this just a way to say "i hate all things bush"?

full disclosure - about a year ago when jeb's name surfaced in conjunction with a 2016 presidential bid, i posted a PJ piece listing the reasons why i felt he was a bad choice (lackluster record in florida; economic ignorance nearly as apalling as obama; lack of clarity of thought or new ideas).

but you've come up with an even more compelling reason i concede: an old tweet about the vatican embassy.

such is the thinking and priorities of the political left.

carry on.
 
The way I see it, if Hillary with all of her baggage can even consider running for President in 2016, then Jeb with GW as baggage can certainly run against her or Biden or any other person that the Dems put out there. Jeb is not GW. Everyone knows that.
 
Jen said:
The way I see it, if Hillary with all of her baggage can even consider running for President in 2016, then Jeb with GW as baggage can certainly run against her or Biden or any other person that the Dems put out there. Jeb is not GW. Everyone knows that.
Click to expand...
I’d crawl over a football field of broken glass to vote for her over whatever cretin the GOP thrusts into our faces.
 
as seen on tv said:
i'm replying to your thread because i feel sorry that you got no responses.

but what motivated you to pick on jeb today? did he do something to get himself in the news? or is this just a way to say "i hate all things bush"?

full disclosure - about a year ago when jeb's name surfaced in conjunction with a 2016 presidential bid, i posted a PJ piece listing the reasons why i felt he was a bad choice (lackluster record in florida; economic ignorance nearly as apalling as obama; lack of clarity of thought or new ideas).

but you've come up with an even more compelling reason i concede: an old tweet about the vatican embassy.

such is the thinking and priorities of the political left.

carry on.
Click to expand...
Yes, he tweeted and got himself in the news by doing so. And it's not a particularly old tweet. It's from last month. And it was just mentioned in a recent New York Times article, which had me thinking about it. I also saw it as a useful jumping off point to discuss the absurdity of the criticism about the embassy relocation, which has come from several prominent conservatives, with Romney just being one of the more prominent. Did that answer your question?
 
Jen said:
The way I see it, if Hillary with all of her baggage can even consider running for President in 2016, then Jeb with GW as baggage can certainly run against her or Biden or any other person that the Dems put out there. Jeb is not GW. Everyone knows that.
Click to expand...
Hillary Clinton's "baggage" includes an association (fair or not) with arguably the most successful president since FDR, whereas Jeb's includes an association (fair or not) with arguably the worst president in American history.

Other than that, both of them have fairly unremarkable resumes. Jeb was a mediocre governor and Clinton was a good, but not great, Secretary of State and a mediocre Senator.
 
Arkady said:
When GW Bush first emerged as the presumptive nominee in 2000, I was a bit disappointed for his brother, Jeb (not Neil, the disgraced S&L guy). Jeb seemed like the much smarter and more accomplished member of the family, and he didn't seem as eager to stoop to the level of the evangelical conservatives. I figured GW Bush was going to poison his brother's chances, either by losing (which would have caused conservatives to shy from the family, given that GHW Bush was already a single-termer), or by winning and being a horrible president.

Turns out, GW Bush was an even more horrible president than I could have imagined, and it does seem to have hurt Jeb's hopes of ever being president. But maybe that's just as well. Jeb recently tweeted about the US moving the Vatican embassy into the same building as the Italian embassy. His tweet was designed to imply it was retaliation for Catholic groups wanting some exemptions from Affordable Care rules. Jeb is too smart to believe for even a moment that's what it was. The move was driven by a desire to save money and to make the facility more secure -- two things Republicans have been pretending to care about a lot lately. The move also puts the facility a bit closer to the Vatican, so there's that side advantage. But Jeb wasn't going to let a little common sense stand between him and stoking religious sentiment for a possible 2016 run. Thus, the concern-troll tweet.

As scandals go, I'll admit this one is a small one. Nearly all politicians will stoop to that kind of politically convenient feigned idiocy from time to time, when they think they can score some free points. But it's grating in the wake of the right-wing second-guessing about Benghazi and the right-wing freak outs about the deficit. The Obama administration finds a way to save money, improve the security of our diplomats, AND move one of our diplomatic facilities to a more convenient spot and the Republicans STILL freak out. If Obama were to find a way to walk on water, Republicans would just attack him about all the jobs it was going to cost in the boating industry.
Click to expand...
Unless he is contemplating a 2016 POTUS run,there is no need for him to join the GOP kneejerk crowd on things like that. He doesn't have to be Palinesque to be relevant.
 
Yuri Zhivago said:
I’d crawl over a football field of broken glass to vote for her over whatever cretin the GOP thrusts into our faces.
Click to expand...
Me too.

I could picture myself voting for the right Republican, if one actually captured the nomination. I like William Cohen, for example, and against a weak Democratic candidate, I could vote for him. Bill Weld's another one. They're extremely smart, fairly independent, mostly devoid of the hate-based partisanship polluting the GOP, and focused more on substantive matters than social wedge-issues. But, I just can't see the GOP nominating someone like that these days. They nominate spineless plutocratic corporate servants masquerading as born-again evangelical bigots.
 
Arkady said:
Hillary Clinton's "baggage" includes an association (fair or not) with arguably the most successful president since FDR, whereas Jeb's includes an association (fair or not) with arguably the worst president in American history.

Other than that, both of them have fairly unremarkable resumes. Jeb was a mediocre governor and Clinton was a good, but not great, Secretary of State and a mediocre Senator.
Click to expand...

I just assessed their viability to run..........and they both have baggage, but not enough to keep them from running.

Arguably, Hillary has much more baggage than Jeb does (whether you care to admit it or not) and enough that she shouldn't even be running. Jeb's mediocrity as a governor might be disagreed with by many Floridians. And after the Obama presidency, and unless you have forgotten about Jimmy Carter......... it's hard to understand how you can possibly say that GW is the worst president in American history.
 
Jen said:
And after the Obama presidency, and unless you have forgotten about Jimmy Carter......... it's hard to understand how you can possibly say that GW is the worst president in American history.
Click to expand...
"hard to understand" only in alternate reality brain raped RW fringe dumb fucks inhabit
 
Jeb vs. Hillary...could be a simple paradigm to put to the voters in 2016-

Do you want the Clinton Presidential model....of peace and prosperity?

or do you want the Bush Presidential model....of war and recession?

Nothing more complicated than that.
 
GordonGecko said:
Jeb vs. Hillary...could be a simple paradigm to put to the voters in 2016-

Do you want the Clinton Presidential model....of peace and prosperity?

or do you want the Bush Presidential model....of war and recession?

Nothing more complicated than that.
Click to expand...

Ah, another Hillary "Iraq War" Clinton supporter/war monger!
 
Jen said:
I just assessed their viability to run..........and they both have baggage, but not enough to keep them from running.

Arguably, Hillary has much more baggage than Jeb does (whether you care to admit it or not) and enough that she shouldn't even be running. Jeb's mediocrity as a governor might be disagreed with by many Floridians. And after the Obama presidency, and unless you have forgotten about Jimmy Carter......... it's hard to understand how you can possibly say that GW is the worst president in American history.
Click to expand...
GW Bush is vastly, vastly worse than Carter and Obama. The numbers alone don't tell the tale, but since they're toughest to argue with, let's start there. The GW Bush era was a period of rapidly rising unemployment, rising poverty, falling median real incomes, falling stock market values, falling value of the dollar vs. other leading currencies, conspicuously poor GDP growth vs. other leading economies, the elimination of record federal budget surpluses, the creation of record federal budget deficits, rising trade deficits, free-falling approval ratings for the US abroad, etc. With only a small handful of exceptions, if there's a way to quantify performance on a matter of social or economic change, things got dramatically worse when he was president.

Crime stats are one of the few exceptions, since Clinton-era improvement continued on his watch. However, even there it's worth pointing out that we went from dramatic improvement under Clinton (a 3.8 point drop in the murder rate), to anemic improvement under Bush (a 0.1 point drop in that rate). And the post-Bush run has returned to one of dramatic improvement (a drop of 0.7 in Obama's first four years). So, even on the rare stat where Bush's time wasn't one of gross worsening, it was still a time that compares unfavorably with what went before and after his time.

You can't find that kind of across-the-board numerical failure with any other president, unless you go all the way back to Hoover. For example, under Obama, deficits have declined, unemployment is down, the stock market is way, way up, US approval ratings around the world have rebounded, etc. Under Carter, we had strong real GDP growth, declining deficits as a share of GDP, and truly exceptional job creation rates. Both Obama and Carter had their numerical failures (like poverty), but these weren't part of an across-the-board record of failure, as with Bush.

To make a case that a president was worse than Bush, you'd do well to start back at least in the time of Hoover, who precipitated an even bigger economic catastrophe. But, Bush might still get the edge, since he presided over the biggest security failure in American history, and was the driving force behind a catastrophic war of choice that cost trillions of dollars and saddled the nation with decades of of increased costs (to care for all the maimed veterans, for example). So, even Hoover may not have been worse, overall, than Bush. You might need to reach back to someone like Andew Johnson.
 
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