Peter Baker, beat-sweetening for the NYTimes, on “The Bushes, as Distinct and Alike as Brothers Can Be”:
… The two brothers spent their formative years growing up in Midland, Tex., but they experienced the most searing event of their childhood in different ways. When their sister Robin died of leukemia, Jeb was an infant, but George was 7, old enough to understand. He took it upon himself to cheer up their devastated mother, adopting a class-clown demeanor that would define his persona for years…
My translation: George got to play “substitute husband” for Bar while Daddy Poppy was off making his bones in the CIA. (Mom still likes George best, and has never cared who knew it.)
[Jeb] married Columba Garnica Gallo, whom he had met in Mexico, at age 21 and moved to Caracas, Venezuela, and then to Florida to become a real estate developer and begin raising a family. George, by contrast, bounced around Texas oil fields for years, enjoying a liquid, languid youth before finally giving up drinking at age 40.Their father’s successful 1988 presidential campaign whetted George’s political appetite. After his father lost the presidency four years later, he embarked on his own campaign in 1994 against the popular governor of Texas, a move that surprised his family even as Jeb was already gearing up to run for governor of Florida. While neither admitted it, many detected a quiet competitiveness. Few expected George to win, but he pulled off the upset while Jeb went down to a surprise defeat.
The split result provoked a moment of sibling friction as George expressed frustration that his parents were focused more on Florida. “Why do you feel bad about Jeb?” he asked his father in an exchange later described by his aunt, Nancy Ellis. “Why don’t you feel good about me?” …
Always Mr. Gracious, our George.
As Jeb rebounded to win Florida’s governorship in 1998, George W. Bush was preparing his own run for the White House — one that would climax in the crucible of Jeb’s Florida two years later. On election night, when it looked as if Al Gore had won Florida, an emotional Jeb hugged George and apologized for letting him down. He was premature. “Back from the ashes,” Jeb called out as more returns came in. For the next five weeks, Jeb’s Florida held the world in suspense until the Supreme Court ended a recount with George ahead.
The recount sealed their relationship again, but the new president spent more time with other siblings during his White House years. Marvin, nicknamed “Marvelous,” went to the White House to watch sports and spent weekends at Camp David. Dorothy Bush Koch, their sister, visited often. Jeb was spotted mainly during holidays or governors’ conferences…
No unseemly mention by Baker of “the runt” Neil, you’ll notice. Dubya didn’t mind his kinfolk hangin’ round, as long as they weren’t political (possible competitors / problems). Sure, Jeb saved Dubya’s bacon until the Five Supremes could step in, but that just made being seen around Jeb a liability, same as with perennial Silverado/INSPIRE! Screwup the Youngest.
Jeb understands that his brother brings both advantages and disadvantages, but he is determined to stand on his own, advisers said. Jeb’s inner circle does not include many from his brother’s team, although lately he has consulted figures like Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, and Richard N. Haass, a former State Department official in both Bush administrations. For George, a Jeb campaign could serve as a form of family validation. “He really wants Jeb to run, and he’s really excited about it,” said one person close to the family. “I think Jeb is like, ‘I could use your money, but if you just hide, that would be helpful.’ ”
Jeb Bush Jr., son of the former Florida governor, said that was not true. “He’s certainly proud of his brother and his dad,” the younger Mr. Bush said last year. “I don’t think he’ll be shying away from that.”…
Jeb Jr, translated: “Staying in the good graces of La Familia is my only chance of succeeding beyond the level of all the other second-gen Florida real-estate hustlers. I’m not letting Daaad fvck that up, no matter how much the old man hates Uncle Dumbya and the neocon vampires that enabled him.”
After reading this article, were I Jeb Bush, I’d trust random members of the professional Democratic “opposition” over any of my loving family. At least most of the professionals would stay loyal as long as the checks cleared; the Bush clan doesn’t seem to have any more honor towards each other than they do with the rest of us.
Corner Stone
Oh, thank goodness. What a perfect thread for this:
“The 1% will own most of world’s wealth by 2016”
“The world’s richest are accumulating greater wealth thanks to a few mechanisms, according to Oxfam. “Elite groups mobilize their vast resources to ensure global rules are favorable toward their interests,” the charity said.
Huge sums of money spent on lobbying are paying off for the richest, allowing their companies to gain tax breaks and favorable policy decisions, which then helps boost their personal fortunes, Oxfam said. The financial sector spent more than $400 million in lobbying in the U.S. in 2013, for instance.
“The cost to the U.S. taxpayer of the bailout of the financial sector was calculated to be $21 billion,” the group noted. “While the financial sector has recovered well as a result of this bailout, median income levels in the USA are yet to return to their pre-crisis levels.”
gene108
I does not matter, if it is John Ellis Bush, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, Chris Christie or Ben Carson running for President.
There is not a damn Republican hopeful, who can put together a foreign policy team that was not neck deep in Bush, Jr.’s wonderful mis-adventure in Iraq.
To bad the media will not bother to point out the role these
hacksvery serious people had in their last job working for a President.No one pointed out Romney’s foreign policy team being the C-Team Bush & Co. flunkies, so I doubt it’ll get pointed out this time around either.
Hal
Sigh. Ann Richards. To paraphrase Effie Trinket in Mockingjay; you deserved so much better.
boatboy_srq
Twice.
Once in 2000 when the ballots were being “counted”, and once more: in 2004, when FL got inundated by a four-hurricane year, and FL state emergency services politely declined FEMA assistance. Without that action, Heckuvajob Brownie would have been shown up for the incompetent narcissist Katrina brought to national attention the following year – and with FEMA so highlighted as the national disgrace Shrub had let it become, a second term would have been unlikely.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I still have a hard time seeing Jebbie getting in to a knife fight with the likes of Cruz and Paul, and maybe even Huckabee could prove pretty nasty in a primary.
Oy. The worst aspect of this dynasty stuff: Dumbya and Bubba both want a proxy to win them a third term.
Schlemazel
@efgoldman:
Thats funny because we lived in FLorida during his ’94 run & it would have been hard to find a dumber, more clueless, candidate than little Jebby. His hand-picked running mate was on the record demeaning Jews and Hispanics (a brilliant choice in FL!) and he was absolutely humiliated in debates with Lawton Chiles.
At the time I had a friend who was a medium-big shot in Florida’s GOP & he told me in strict confidence that Jeb was know to be the stupid brother, Neil was the smart one & one was a complete lush.
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In Hillary’s defense, given the sexism she would face, if she were the Democratic nominee, I think having an accomplished husband is a must.
There’s going to be enough crap thrown here way, without “jokes” about “who wears the pant (suits) in that house” that would inevitably come, if the hubby did not have a good career to stand on and you cannot do much better than being a two term President.
All the fragile male egos can rest assured that Hillary’s man isn’t some whipped pusillanimous girly man and a successful woman won’t turn them into it either.
Waspuppet
So glad the Bush family takes the office of governor and the job of governing as such grave, serious responsibilities.
Amir Khalid
I think it’s absolutely marvelous that the 2016 presidential campaign will have its own version of Bobby vs. JR.
balconesfault
I call BS here. GW’s run for governor was totally fueled by various “Friends of Bush” – from their sweetheart deal to allow him to buy into the Texas Rangers that gave him a high profile (and after the sale, huge cash reserves) with a politically uncharged entity to the basic structure of his campaign. I do not believe that this took place without Poppy’s hand on the till.
Schlemazel
Not from the onion:
http://dailycurrant.com/2015/01/19/republicans-pass-resolution-declaring-racism-is-over/
So nice we don’t have to worry about racism any more
Violet
I think Jeb Bush is kind of chubby and a bit schlubby. I did a search to find a picture to see what he looked like now and the first thing that came up on a web search for Jeb Bush was an article on Town Hall today. It began:
Out of curiosity I clicked through. The article is rated “Important” by Town Hall users and here’s what it has to say about Jeb:
They don’t like him.
SWMBO
Don’t know if anyone else remembers Lawton Chiles first run for governor but during the campaign, the opp research found out that Chiles was taking Prozac. Instead of running from it, Chiles had bumper stickers made that said “Would you rather have a Governor that HAS depression or CAUSES it.” He beat Martinez like a rented mule.
Violet
@Schlemazel: The Daily Currant is a satirical news site. Not The Onion but not far off.
Woodrowfan
deleted: OBE
ranchandsyrup
I don’t think his name is John Ellis Bush. Jeb is short for Jebraham or Jebroni.
schrodinger's cat
Horse race coverage when the horses are in their stables is boring. Next topic please. Is there nothing else happening in the world worthy of attention?
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Meh. You may be right, but it’s pretty irrelevant since getting in a public knife fight can really backfire in politics. There was little in the way of personal attacks in the 2012 Republican primaries, and nice guy Mitt won handily.
The attacks and smearing are mostly done through ads funded by PACs. Once Gingrich looked like he was giving Romney some competition he was destroyed in TV ads. Romney had the $$$ to do that, and Bush will as well.
Betty Cracker
Hasn’t this country suffered enough in that particular family’s pathological quest for validation? Fuck the lot of them with a roll of rusty barbed wire.
@SWMBO: Chiles was a helluva governor. I miss him, and I fear we’ll never see his like again.
boatboy_srq
@Violet:
“Falsehood” and “perversion” must mean something different to our wingnut brethren. And the rabid ODS on display in that single sentence is really something.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Has the wag radius returned to normal? How is your seal dog?
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Nah. They should just rename this blog Jeb Juice for the next two years.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Puppehs R Us would be a better name, I think and cuter than Jeb.
Chris
@Violet:
To be fair, they don’t like anyone. It was quite something watching the endless parade of Not-Romneys in 2012, with them fixating on a new shiny object for a few weeks before deciding that no, they don’t like it either, and throwing it out. And then going with Mitt Romney. Whom they also didn’t like.
I think thirty five years after Reagan, it’s just gotten harder and harder for them to rationalize the fact that the politicians they keep electing aren’t getting them the country they want. And they deal with it by increasingly labeling everything in politics a RINO conspiracy. (Not that they won’t still turn up and vote against the uppity woman or black man, of course).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The two funniest things about the 2016 field-gathering: 1) Booby Jindal still flailing around still trying to get somebody’s attention, and 2) under creepy-funny, Lindsay Graham, John McCain’s “illegitimate son”, talking about forming an exploratory committee. Keep the Neocon flame alive!
Read more at http://wonkette.com/572864/forget-bushes-and-clintons-john-mccain-will-start-dynasty-with-illegitimate-son-lindsey-graham#gg0Rh0DXmuIODkFp.99
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: She can wag, but it’s weird — she doesn’t hold her tail the way she used to, as if she’s forgotten what’s normal. Also, she’s gained weight, probably because she laid around a lot while she was recovering from the sprained tail (and maybe because she pigged out during the holidays!). We’re trying to get her back to normal, but it’s taking some time. Poor doggie!
sharl
@balconesfault:
Yep, and boy did that investment pay off for those folks! It should be noted that the outsourcing was started under Clinton, but AFAICT, Dubya’s folks cranked it up to ’11’ and broke off the knob. Despite Obama’s stated intent to return government operations to government activities/employees, I don’t give that a lot of hope for the short term, given his apparent list of priorities, the distractions and push-back he gets from Congress on even the smallest things, and the reductions-in-force and recent sequesters and furloughs in some departments that have made working with Uncle a much less palatable option for those who might otherwise consider it.
As it stands, I suspect we’re stuck with the status quo for the foreseeable future.
America’s $320 Billion Shadow Government (2011, Fiscal Times)
Bad Business: Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Hiring Contractors
mai naem mobile
Fuck the Bushes. I wish they would leave this country alone. Hell, I wish they would go to Peru or Paraguay or wherever the hell they were supposed to have bought a bunch of land. Go away crooks!
Pogonip
@schrodinger’s cat: Not as far as our betters are concerned. Be glad that these days they don’t drag us away from our homes and fields to fight over their fiefdoms.
Pogonip
This is all interesting–but what does it have to do with puppies?
Ripley
@Pogonip:
Puppies are widely known to be the favorite sacrificial meal of the Bush clan. W prefers the hindquarters.
catclub
@Mandalay:
But if both Bush and Romney are in it – they will spend that money attacking each other. Romney in 2012 could do it because Newt (or Santorum in the other case) had no money.
Corner Stone
@Violet:
“a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.”
Corner Stone
Such bullshit. He had the full backing of every slag-thrower at the dynasty’s disposal.
Corner Stone
I’m still going on record, as I have been for months. It’s Jeb or Mitt in 2016.
Pogonip
FYWP ate my remark about government contracting. Short version: it’s very expensive. It ain’t going nowhere, for three very good reasons.
1). It’s part of the free market religion.
2). Our betters employ each other within it; it’s a huge, relatively politically neutral, version of Wingnut welfare.
3).[the most important reason, I think]Without it, it would be impossible to maintain even the illusion of a middle class. So many people would be out of work that there might be real demand for change, as in the 1930’s. DOD, in particular, should be renamed the Department of Middle-Class Welfare, its main modern function, and another agency set up to defend the borders.
DOD is a particularly sad case, because all that money going to consultants and systems that no service needs could be going to infrastructure. Defense is not just dropping bombs on shepherds. It is also good roads, good power and water systems, good bridges. Why not pay the contractors ridiculous amounts of money to do what actually needs doing?
catclub
@Violet:
Looking from the outside, because he comes with electability built in, this is why he is dangerous in the general. IF he gets to the general.
Is it enough? who knows.
Tree With Water
Never once forget Terry Schiavo whenever J.B’s. name is mentioned. The poor thing might still be laying on her deathbed just waiting, waiting, waiting if that truly rotten SOB Jeb Bush had had his way…. It will certainly be interesting to see how his GOP rivals for the nomination deal with the Schiavo incident- will any dare condemn him for it?
Corner Stone
@Tree With Water:
How would they go about doing that?
Betty Cracker
@Tree With Water: Why would they condemn him for it? They almost certainly agree with how he handled it. If they don’t dare bring it up, it’s not because they think Jeb was wrong but because they recognize the public was horrified by their interference in a personal family matter.
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
I don’t see it. Most of those jobs would still need doing whether they’re contracted out or done by a government employee directly, and they’re likely to be middle class jobs either way. If anything, bringing stuff back in-house rather than contracting it out is likely to be better for the middle class because the government will pay even people at the bottom end of its salary scale decently and provide them with real benefits.
Mike in NC
We’ll know JEB! is serious about running when he becomes a spokesman for Weight Watchers. Lately he’s been looking rather Christie-esque.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I could see Paul bringing it up, depending on which way his erratic impulses are pulling him on a given day. Then he’d probably contradict himself the next day
Villago Delenda Est
Whole fucking crime family needs the Ceausescu treatment.
Schlemazel
@Violet:
Aw, you spoiled my fun!
Chris
It endlessly fascinates me how the government’s role in propping up businesses (this is one example; the bailouts was another) legitimizes free market capitalism. We’re protected from the worst excesses of the market, so we can continue to believe in it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip:
Because the help might benefit, no matter how slightly, from it.
Never underestimate the mean-spiritedness of these vile assholes.
Tree With Water
@Betty Cracker: That’s my point. I believe the vast majority of voters across the country are allied in feeling a primal revulsion at his actions in that sordid episode. Or they will be, when they’re reminded of it. His was essentially an attack upon the sanctity of the family unit. It presents all the republican hopefuls with quite the conundrum.
Tree With Water
@Corner Stone: That’s just it. They can’t, without forfeiting the nomination.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
The only hope may be is if they start to get nervous:
That’s Larry Summers. Starting to sweat a little :)
I love ‘mobile global elite”. One of my sisters talks about that- “these people don’t live anywhere, really”
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s the only one I could see bringing it up on libertarian grounds, but like you implied, Baby Doc is pretty inconsistent when it comes to “life” issues. He apparently finds no contradictions between “liberty” and forcing a woman to bear a child against her will.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: My Rumproast co-blogger StrangeAppar8us had a great take on the “mobile global elite,” to wit:
Yep.
Citizen Alan
Personally, I blame FDR. We could have avoided all this crap if he’d just had Prescott Bush hanged for treason back in WW2.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I watched a documentary on piracy (the old-fashioned kind, shipping) and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “Oh, look at this…thing they made. It’s an entirely corporate world!”
They don’t even bother with state actors. Not powerful enough. They go right to the CEOs.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
He was in the Senate during much of the time I lived in Florida, and was a helluva good Senator, too. Yes, I miss him.
ruemara
@Schlemazel: daily currant is actually a form of the Onion. The green onion, one could say.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: “Liberty” is the sole domain of white Christian straight males.
No one else is entitled to “Liberty” in the warped universe of the scum that are the Pauls.
NotMax
@ruemara
IIRC, it’s also the site whose stories either Tucker Carlson’s (simultaneously loathsome and laughable) place or Breitbart (or both) have swallowed whole as gospel more than once.
pseudonymous in nc
@Corner Stone:
Which, on a global scale, means anyone earning $34,000 a year or more.
But at the top end, it definitely includes the ruling families of feudal America.
Zinsky
No, Anne, George didn’t play husband when Poppy was “making his bones with the CIA”. Poppy was boning his assistant, Jennifer Fitzgerald. Bill Clinton had to explain sexual dalliances that happened a dozen years before he became president. But George H.W. Bush was never asked to explain an extramarital affair he was having when he was Vice President. Just like Dubya was never called to account for impregnating Robin Lowman in 1971 before Roe vs. Wade and paying for her to abort his love child.
dr. fancypants
Odd how much of an open secret this was in D.C. Even my now-deceased step-grandfather (who made friends with some gossipy Secret Service agents) knew all about it, and he was just a random DUI lawyer in the city.
Montarvillois
@mai naem mobile: From a commentator in today’s WaPo – Name me one Bush that hasn’t been tied to a corrupt business. We can go as far back to Prescott Bush if you like.
aimai
@balconesfault: Also George Bush the Lesser is well known to be extremely competitive–Kitty Kelly’s book is full of horrifying examples of his cheating/competing with even children in the family. There is no way anyone would offer “competitive” as a surprising conclusion.
Keith G
I wish that the “Bush family analysis” would just stop. What matters is who we are and what we propose to do. Using old information to refight old battles is a sure way to lose voter interest and lose elections.