Ding, dong, the dynasty is dead: so long to Jeb Bush and the family legacy
But, perhaps despite the sadness on his face as he took his leave of the race, and despite his wife’s tears, and despite the fact that, by comparison, he is probably a less odious person than many of the men left in the race, there’s no need to feel pity. The Bush dynasty lost this once; given what it’s done for America in the past, that might ultimately be a good thing.
The Bush clan is a pack of jackals that has skittered among the tall grass of politics now for four generations. Granddad Prescott was a senator who made his cash at Brown Brothers Harriman, in part by investing in Germany’s financial rebuilding on the road to WWII. George HW Bush worked at Brown Brothers Harriman, too, before becoming an oil wildcatter, then a congressman, the head of the CIA (where he overlooked domestic anti-communist terrorism) and finally president, where he pardoned away the dregs of Iran-Contra and solidified the post-Watergate blueprint for America’s refusal to prosecute its greatest political criminals.
You know all about Jeb’s brother, George W “Endless War” Bush. Jeb’s son, George P Bush, once reportedly crashed a car into his ex-girlfriend’s yard after failing to gain entrance via a window (her family opted not to press charges) and is now Texas Land Commissioner – after raising over $3m dollars for the race before he even had a challenger and on the basis of his extensive experience as Bush family member. Maybe Jeb’s failure means his son won’t strive for even higher office. Or maybe not.
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But this is the small justice that people seek when they know the system will forever fail them. There is no glee here, just resignation. Besides, interpreting events like that again focuses on Trump, when the visceral truth of the Bush campaign was that we finally saw the rot of their dynasty move to the surface, like cheap composite plywood puncturing through a deep wood veneer.
Jeb Bush was one of the family, and he failed. And if there is one, stark emotional legacy of the Jeb 2016 experience, it is this: despite coming from all that power and money, Jeb Bush ran a campaign so wracked with failure and so thoroughly inept that he could move millions of Americans beyond their richly earned contempt for him and his family. By the end, Jeb Bush actually made people feel sorry for him.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/20/jeb-bush-family-legacy-dynasty-election-2016
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