Who Killed Jeb Bush�s Campaign? Jeb Did
John Cassidy
Primary campaigns, once they get going, move quickly and mercilessly. Two days after the G.O.P. primary in South Carolina, Jeb Bushs decision to drop out of the Presidential race is already grist for late-night comedians, and his campaign, which began with great hopes, is about to be inducted into the museum of great failures. There it will sit alongside the Ford Edsel, New Coke, the Apple Newton, and Madonnas acting career.
But before leaving the former Florida governor to the comics and the historians, it might be worth trying to draw some lessons from his ordeal. In the wake of Bushs departure, some of his supporters are trying to spin his failure as the inevitable result of larger forces, particularly the wave of anti-establishment feeling in the Republican Party that has given rise to the success of Donald Trump.
Our theory was to dominate the establishment lane into the actual voting primaries, Mike Murphy, a veteran G.O.P. operative who ran Bushs Super PAC, Right to Rise, told the Washington Post. That was the strategy, and it did not work. I think it was the right strategy for Jeb. The problem was, there was a huge anti-establishment wave. The establishment lane was smaller than we thought it would be. The marketplace was looking for something different. Sally Bradshaw, Bushs senior campaign strategist, told the Post, It would be difficult for any solutions-oriented conservative to tackle Trump in this environment, much less one who was seen as having been so much a part of the establishment. He was never going to be an angry guyand voters wanted angry.
Clearly, there is something in this argument, particularly the Trump aspect of it. On June 13th of last year, two days before Bush made his Presidential bid official, he had the support of 17.8 per cent of the Republican electorate, according to the Real Clear Politics poll average. No other candidate was in double figures.
Little did Bush know, he had peaked. On June 16th, Trump said that he was entering the race. Within a month, he had replaced Bush as the front-runner. By the end of August, Trump was at twenty-five per cent in the polls, and Bush, whom he had repeatedly labeled a low-energy loser, was down in the single figures. The former Florida governor had been Trumped, and he never recovered.
But that is only part of the story of Bushs ill-fated campaign. A key question is why he proved so vulnerable to Trumps attacks. The harsh answer is that he was a woeful candidate. Modern Presidential campaigns are monstrous affairs. They cost far too much money, last way too long, and often revolve around meaningless disputes rather than policy substance. But they do weed out weak campaigners, and that is what happened to Jeb.
At the outset, Bush had money (lots of money), name recognition, a reputation for decency, and a gubernatorial record that appealed to conservatives. But he didnt have much else. He lacked charisma, eloquence, passion, enthusiastic supporters, and a distinctive message. In politics, you can sometimes get by without one of these things. But sallying forth without any of them is a recipe for misery.
Even before Trump entered the race, Bush, despite his position at the top of the polls, was having trouble. Rather than plunging into the contest at the start of 2015 and going full out, he decided on a soft launch. It consisted of a series of speeches and carefully orchestrated appearances, some of which went badly. He spoke woodenly, he didnt have anything very new or fresh to say, and he made a number of gaffes, which encouraged his opponents and gave the media something to feast on.
Even at that stage, it was hard to see where Bushs support would come from. In surveys, many Republicans cited his perceived electability in the general election as a reason for supporting him, but there was little groundswell of support for him personally. Many conservative Republican were angry at the Bush family for George W. s perceived softness on federal spending and his support of the Common Core. Some less ideological Republicans appeared to sympathize with Barbara Bushs 2013 statement, Weve had enough Bushes.
His pre-Trump lead in the polls was never a commanding one. For much of the time, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio were within a few points of him, with Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee not far behind. The problem wasnt just his tendency to mangle his words, such as when he confused Iran with Iraq, referred to the problem of anchor babies and compounded the gaffe by associating them with Asian immigrants, or said that People need to work longer hours. It was the lack of an arresting theme for his campaign, which made it difficult for him to distinguish himself from the pack.
Looking back, this failure was a bit surprising. During his two terms as governor of Florida, Bush had established himself as something of a groundbreaker for twenty-first century conservatism. He cut taxes repeatedly, hobbled labor unions, hacked away at state payrolls, defunded Planned Parenthood, and encouraged the growth of charter schools. But when it came to running for President, he couldnt draw his experiences together into anything more convincing than a born-again economic optimism, which, even in the Republican Party, seemed out of tune with the times.
This messaging difficulty was reflected in his staffs struggles to come up with a campaign slogan. In the end, they were reduced to going with Jeb! For movies, music albums, and books, a one-word title may suffice. For would-be Presidential candidates, it is a problem, especially if that word is the candidates name, and the candidate is a bespectacled man just two years shy of retirement age.
Last August, I noted that Bush seems incapable of saying anything snappy or memorable. This weakness was magnified after Trump started jabbing at him on Twitter and elsewhere, and it was accompanied by what looked like stage fright. At the first two televised G.O.P. debates, in August and September, Bush seemed nervous and uncomfortable, and it was sorely evident to one and all that he didnt know how to respond to Trump.
According to a revealing post-mortem by CNNs Ashley Killough, who spent months reporting on Bush, his failure to go after the New York billionaire reflected a belief within the campaign that the wisest policy was to ignore him. This campaign probably felt for some time that it was best to let Trump hang out there and make a fool of himself, a Bush adviser told Killough. Some conservative commentators outside the campaign shared this belief, but a shrewder politician than Bush would have realized much earlier how much damage Trump was doing to himparticularly with his low energy barbsand how essential it was to return fire.
Ironically, when Bush finally did challenge Trumpduring debates in December and Januaryhis counter-attacks were pretty effective. By then, though, it was too late. Much as the Obama campaign succeeded, during 2011 and 2012, in defining Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch rich guy, Trump succeeded in defining Bush as a listless dynastic politician.
By that stage, the Washington-based Republican establishment couldnt save its favored candidate. Indeed, setting aside Bushs weaknesses for a moment, the central lesson of his failed campaign is how weak the Party apparatus really is. In fact, it is so weak it barely deserves to be called an establishment.
The Democratic Party, for all of its ills at the local level, can still call on the labor unions and groups such as EMILYs List and Planned Parenthood to find and marshal potential voters. (Faced with a surging Bernie Sanders, thats what Hillary Clintons campaign just did in Nevada, and it worked.) The Republican Party, by contrast, for long used money as its central organizing tool and disciplining device. But in a postCitizens United world, G.O.P. candidates no longer need to rely on the Republican National Committee and its roster of high-end donors. There are plenty of other sources of cash, including, in Trumps case, the candidates own bank account.
When money is limited and doled out unequally, it can easily tip the balance in politics. When it is ubiquitous, its various sources tend to cancel each other out, and elections come down to the fundamentals: candidate, message, and organization. The Bush campaign wasnt strong in any of these areas, and that, more than anything, explains its demise. The New Yorker
