Third Time's The Charm

Faithful White House stenographer Elisabeth Bumiller ponders the value of continuing America's favorite underachieving political dynasty.

Those are the questions some Republicans are asking themselves as political talk bubbles up yet again about President Bush's brother Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and his interest in the White House. The chief driver of the mini-buzz is the current occupant of the White House, who has said twice this month that his younger brother would make "a great president."

Uh-huh. I'm sure that when Himself was matriculating at Yale, he probably thought Steve McQueen would have made a great Gilligan, or Jerry Lewis would have been the ideal Superman. Right now an endorsement of aptitude from this halfwit is not exactly a feather in anyone's cap; if Bush were to publicly surmise that the sun would come out tomorrow, you just might want to prepare for a snowstorm.

No one, the president included, is suggesting that the younger Bush will run in 2008, and Governor Bush, whose second term is up in January, has adamantly ruled it out.

But Republican Party leaders continue to talk seriously about a continuation of the dynasty, a Bush III administration, with Jeb as a candidate in 2012 or 2016, when the memory of the current president's dismal poll ratings will be less of a factor. That, at least, is what happened the last time around: President George Bush's unpopularity at the end of his term in 1992 did not hurt his eldest son when he ran for president eight years later.

Actually, it did hurt him somewhat, but that was offset by the press' childish insistence on braying endlessly about "Clinton fatigue" and Gore playing tonsil hockey with the little woman at the Democratic Convention. Serious policy discussions for them were about whether or not Gore was "alpha" enough for them (though they themselves are all "lambda" at best), and whether or not Gore actually had a hand in inventing the internets that George W. Bush apparently has yet to figure out how to even use.

But worse yet is what Steno Liz intimates, that Bush's "dismal poll ratings" will be but a fading memory by 2012, when "Jeb" would be deemed politically viable by the people who rent families like the Bushes for public cover. Because we are just stupid enough, evidently, to forget everything in just a few short years.

Hell, maybe they're right. The Republicans have already decided to make the midterms about immigration policy, flag burning, and gay marriage (again). As venal as they are, they do have people researching the viability of these "issues". The fact that they are apparently important to enough morons out there to warrant making them a part of the campaign, in the face of everything else that's going on, may be an indicator that there's simply a preponderance of unserious goons out there in the electorate.

If only they could be content with marrying their cousins and sending money to "Pat" Robertson, instead of taking the rest of the country (and the world) down with them.

Meanwhile, Liz does her duty and softpedals the family baggage that the Bushes --like their Kennedy counterparts -- carry with them.

Second, friends of the Bushes say that Jeb does not want the intense focus of a presidential campaign on his wife and daughter, and that his mother, for one, is opposed to a 2008 race. "It's very clear that he knows what he has to do for himself and his family in the immediate future," said Ron Kaufman, a political adviser to the first President Bush.

In 2002, Jeb's daughter, Noelle, then 24, was arrested on charges of prescription fraud, accused of illegally trying to buy the anti-anxiety drug Xanax from a drugstore in the small hours of the morning. In 1999, Jeb's wife, Columba, was fined $4,100 by customs officials in Atlanta for failing to declare $19,000 in clothing and jewelry she bought on a trip to Paris.

She conveniently forgot "Jeb"'s oldest son, George Prescott, aka "P", who went on a New Year's Eve bender while a freshman at Rice, got into a fight with his girlfriend, went to her house, got into a fight with her father, came back at 4AM and trashed their lawn with his Explorer. He's an overprivileged little punk, just like his uncle(s).

Then of course there's the other Bush brothers, including Neil, who has become the traveling scepter receptacle for insane cult whackjob Sun Myung Moon. I suppose it's too much to expect a hack like Bumiller to talk about easily-researched facts like those, so I'll step in and do her job for her. Again.

More here regarding "Jeb", "P", Neil and the rest of this "dynasty" of corrupt grifters.