I also watched about three minutes of a post-debate interview of Bush by a CNN reporter, itself styled negatively by CNN, something like a "testy" interchange. Maybe it got testy or whatever in the other two minutes but it was not in the three minutes that I watched. What struck me was Bush was still hitting the missed Senate votes note even after the reporter told him social media was not treating that as a high note for him. He still thought that was the right tune to be singing. That is a problem. It is evidence that Jeb doesn't hear well. Messages are not accurately processed going into his brain in addition to not being processed adequately in the brain before being disgorged through the mouth.
When I read about the exchange with Rubio this morning my instant reaction was, "This was cooked up in the Bush Mind when he gathered with 41 and 43 in Texas over the weekend." It was a collective Bush epiphany. Service, duty, missed votes, dereliction of duty: The Bush's are all about those first two and no Bush ever would do the last. The Bush Mind did not process that that is a limp dick message.
Republican voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and caucus-goers in Iowa, do not give a shit how many votes a senator from Florida missed or attended. Marco Rubio is running for president not for reelection to the Senate from Florida. Republican primary and caucus participants are concerned with...the vision thing, they want to be inspired, they want a candidate who puts lead in their pencil, not a pencil-pushing, wonkish executive. This is only partly about resumes, this is killing the job interview. The best prepared man ever for the presidency turned out to be a middling, failed president, George Herbert Walker Bush. It is clear so far this election season that Republican rank-and-file consider experience counter-indicated in a candidate, see Trump, Carson, Fiorina.
The "Missed Votes" attack is not going to work this year, the Bush's don't get that message, and it has not worked in presidential campaigns historically. In 1960 it was swatted away to more devastating effect than Marco Rubio did last night. Seated right beside each other on the dais Lyndon Johnson first and then John F. Kennedy made brief argument on why the one and not the other should receive the Democratic nomination for president. LBJ said JFK had missed a bunch of votes in the Senate. Kennedy stood up at his turn and said that it was true that he had missed lots of votes and that was why he was supporting LBJ to continue in his position as Senate Majority Leader.
That was the end of that tune.
When I read about the exchange with Rubio this morning my instant reaction was, "This was cooked up in the Bush Mind when he gathered with 41 and 43 in Texas over the weekend." It was a collective Bush epiphany. Service, duty, missed votes, dereliction of duty: The Bush's are all about those first two and no Bush ever would do the last. The Bush Mind did not process that that is a limp dick message.
Republican voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and caucus-goers in Iowa, do not give a shit how many votes a senator from Florida missed or attended. Marco Rubio is running for president not for reelection to the Senate from Florida. Republican primary and caucus participants are concerned with...the vision thing, they want to be inspired, they want a candidate who puts lead in their pencil, not a pencil-pushing, wonkish executive. This is only partly about resumes, this is killing the job interview. The best prepared man ever for the presidency turned out to be a middling, failed president, George Herbert Walker Bush. It is clear so far this election season that Republican rank-and-file consider experience counter-indicated in a candidate, see Trump, Carson, Fiorina.
The "Missed Votes" attack is not going to work this year, the Bush's don't get that message, and it has not worked in presidential campaigns historically. In 1960 it was swatted away to more devastating effect than Marco Rubio did last night. Seated right beside each other on the dais Lyndon Johnson first and then John F. Kennedy made brief argument on why the one and not the other should receive the Democratic nomination for president. LBJ said JFK had missed a bunch of votes in the Senate. Kennedy stood up at his turn and said that it was true that he had missed lots of votes and that was why he was supporting LBJ to continue in his position as Senate Majority Leader.
That was the end of that tune.
