— by Odysseus
Although recent polls show Republican presidential contender Donald Trump as polling slightly ahead of Jeb Bush, it is clear that Republican insiders prefer Jeb Bush to be their candidate for 2016. The reasons that they prefer Jeb Bush are very obvious to the “professional” political analysts. Unfortunately, these Beltway professionals are also oblivious to the real world reasons that Jeb Bush is precisely the wrong candidate. In all likelihood, Jeb Bush is the only candidate in the Republican field that Democratic contender Hillary Clinton is capable of beating because, much as Mitt Romney shielded Obama from his greatest weaknesses, Bush shields Clinton from her greatest weakness. This is the reason that liberal activists and their lap dogs in the Beltway’s chattering class and in the media are pulling out all the stops in an effort to set up Jeb Bush as the the last remaining Republican so that he can be easily cut down by Hillary Clinton.
Political strategists and advisers analyze election campaigns almost mathematically. They follow formulas that place weight and emphasis on predictable and quantifiable elements in any election. After weighing and balancing those factors, they calculate which candidate has what strengths, and, then, they calculate what they must do to maximize these strengths while trying to minimize the candidate’s weaknesses.
While there is much wisdom and power to this quantitative type of political thinking, there is also an emotional side to electoral wisdom that is more art than mathematics. It is the artistic, emotional side of human decision making that eludes the mathematicians, and this is why the Republicans keep losing national elections. Republican analysts persist in making logical and quantitative arguments that may appeal to the person sitting in the airport and reading The Economist magazine. Yet, these same arguments do not resonate with his partner who is sitting next to him and reading Self magazine.
From the purely quantitative perspective, the argument for Jeb Bush as the Republican nominee for President of the United States is compelling. He has national name recognition, an heir to the Bush dynasty that produced two presidents in the past three decades. As a member of the Bush clan, he is a known quantity. He was the governor of the swing state of Florida and succeeded in getting elected and re-elected there. He has a Hispanic wife and children, he speaks Spanish, and, therefore, is expected to present a more sympathetic candidate to Latin voters whom Republicans are desperately to woo. He has the campaign fundraising infrastructure and connections that were built by two previous Presidents of the House of Bush, and, therefore, he enjoys an institutional memory of how to conduct and maintain a successful presidential campaign. Finally, he is not likely to make any gross mistakes that will cost him the brass ring. If Jeb Bush is the Republican candidate, he is guaranteed to run a technically flawless and perfectly executed campaign, right up to the point that he will lose to Hillary Clinton.
After Jeb Bush is defeated and Hillary Clinton becomes the first female President of the United States, an army of pundits and professional consultants will carve out lucrative careers for the next four years out of the post mortem analysis of what went wrong with the Bush campaign and pontificating over the decimal points, and , just as they did with the failed 2012 campaign of former Massachusetts governor and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney. What they will miss is the emotional, and, in some ways, irrational aspect of politics.
Politics is an art form, not a science. No rational analysis could have predicted Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Weimar Germany of the 1930s. No rational analysis could have predicted that Barrack Hussein Obama, who was: a) a part term Senator with zero national political experience, b) who could always be counted to vote with the farthest left wing of the left wing party on every issue, c) who was an acolyte of radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and d) had a middle name of Hussein, could win the 2008 presidential election. This is especially true even when the Republican candidate was maverick Arizona Senator John McCain, the only Republican who was beloved by the news media precisely because he was an atypical Republican whose positions on the issues did not differ much from the vast majority of liberal Democrats. Likewise, in 1980, similar professional Republican talking heads discounted Republican candidate Ronald Reagan’s chances to be elected President, even though he was a popular governor of California, because he was a divorced B movie actor and his rhetoric hearkened back to President Dwight Eisenhower’s era. They ignored that America had moved on past the 1960s’ era of “Flower Power” and onto the 1970s’ “Disco” era. What these so-called professionals fail to understand is that voters are not mere widgets in a complex political calculation machine. In reality, each human cog and sprocket in the political machine turns not just by the laws of motion, but also because it wants to.
Hillary Clinton’s greatest political weakness is the “Clinton Fatigue”. Although she is a known quantity, whose candidacy cannot be derailed by an “October Surprise” scandal campaign because the “shock” factor of such scandals only works on political candidates that the public does not already know well, this element of familiarity is an even bigger hindrance to Hillary Clinton. What the American people know about Hillary Clinton, they do not particularly like. While there may be favorable feelings towards the Presidency of her husband Bill Clinton, their whole period in the White House left an unpleasant aftertaste. Even the people who like them may be ready for something new.
Since Hillary’s greatest weakness is the American people’s familiarity with her and her appearance as a “re-tread tire”, the absolute worst thing the Republicans can do is to present to the voters yet another “re-tread tire” as the only alternative to her. Jeb Bush is, most decidedly, not “something new”. The only people stupid enough to think that running a Republican re-tread against a Democrat re-tread will work are the so called Beltway professionals. They ignore that two previous episodes of a Bush presidency also left an unpleasant aftertaste even among Republicans. Even amongst those who have favorable feelings towards either former President, there is a level of Clinton and Bush fatigue, and a genuine desire for a “new direction”. Any normal American residing outside the Beltway would understand this truism instinctively.
The Beltway professionals missed something similar with the 2012 Presidential candidacy of Willard “Mitt” Romney. The American public had overwhelmingly rejected President Obama’s signature health care plan, “Obamacare”. This rejection resulted in the Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives, created the “Tea Party” movement, and drove President Obama’s popularity down to the low 30% approval rating at various points before the election. Instead of nominating a Republican candidate who was dissimilar to President Obama and capitalizing on the differences, the Republicans nominated the one candidate whose Massachusetts “Romneycare” health care plan had been inspirational in the creation of “Obamacare”. Again, only the Republicans’ Beltway “professionals” could have been that stupid. Although Presidential candidate Mitt Romney had other flaws that would have been obvious to anyone outside of Manhattan and the Beltway, his prominent role in the creation of “Romneycare” alone was enough to doom his candidacy. Romney could not attack Obama and capitalize on the one issue that generated the greatest threat to Obama’s re-election, government control of health care.
In 2016, the greatest obstacle to Hillary Clinton’s presidency is the American people’s fatigue with the Clinton brand and their desire to put all the pain, nastiness, and past negative feelings about the Clinton years behind them, and their desire to move on to something clean and new. The voters want a chance to “start over” with a new presidential candidate, whose faults are not so apparent, the ugly personal history is not so obvious, and who has a chance to pleasantly surprise them. Yet another “Bush” President does not give the American voters that “new car smell”. If the voters’ only choice is between one re-tread or another, they might as well vote for another Clinton, and they will.