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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

You Heard It Here First, Frist

Jeb Bush will be the Republican candidate for president in 2008.  With apologies to Yogi, this one is over before it’s even begun.

The Republicans will run on W’s record—and on whatever parts of his agenda remain unaccomplished.  They will never take the wimpy, apologetic route traveled by Gore in 2000, who tried to act as if he had never met Clinton.  Never compromise, never apologize.  That’s the Republican way.  Their candidate will run as W’s appointed successor.

The nerve-wracking part for the GOP will be the necessity of putting a new man in front of the public.  The voters are more likely to take a long look when they are faced with an unknown quantity.  So the party’s power-brokers will play it as safe as possible.  And it doesn’t get any safer than Jeb.  (Remember this is the party that has had a Dole or a Bush on the ticket every time since 1976.  Which means, I guess, that Libby Dole is Jeb’s only serious rival.)

That Jeb is from Florida is only icing on the cake.  He’ll have the money (like his brother did in 2000) and all the major players in his camp months before the primaries even begin. 

If I am wrong, we will be witnessing something that truly merits the name of revolution.  Because a candidate other than Jeb will mean that the party’s power-brokers will have lost control to its grass-roots cultural conservatives.  Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Republicans became the first American political party to be taken over from the elites by its foot-soldiers?  Hard to see that happening, if only because Republican foot-soldiers have so much built-in reverence for authority.  That’s one reason why the Republicans are always more disciplined than the Democrats.  Republican elites may argue among themselves and jockey for power, but it will be a new day in American politics when the party indulges in the all-out, equal opportunity squabbles that make the Democrats so lovable and so laughable and so frustrating.

The only other wild card, so far as I can see, is Bush family dynamics.  Laura and Barbara obviously love W, but relations between father and son and between brother and brother are much harder to fathom.  W has kept both H. W. and Jeb at arm’s length, and he might just scuttle Jeb’s hopes for the sheer devilry of it, just because he can put the kibosh on the whole deal.  He’s nasty enough for that.  More likely, however, W will settle for appointment as Secretary of State.  And Rummy will stay over at the Pentagon, aiming to break J. Edgar Hoover’s Guinness Record for abusive incompetence in office.

Will Jeb win?  Events, one would hope, will have something to say about that.  It would be horrible to think that nothing could happen that would change the voters’ minds about what the Republicans have dished out since 2000.  And I also hope that the Democrats will have something to say about it as well.  A good candidate and a good campaign against a non-incumbent gives the Democrats a fighting chance.  Plus the Republicans are not without their vulnerabilities.  How will they play the Social Security issue, since their numbers are demonstrably bogus and the public doesn’t trust them an inch on the subject?  And they will be deprived of one of their favorite campaign themes if they succeed in making the Bush tax cuts permanent.  Not even these Republicans would have the gall to promise to cut taxes further.  Of course, they will continue to assure us that it’s Republicans who can be best trusted to balance the federal deficit.

But the Electoral College map is daunting.  Jeb takes Florida, which means that there are very, very few states in play.  Almost all the close states last time went Democratic.  So the Democrats have to hold on to every one of their states (which won’t be easy) and win a few more.  Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota were all closer races than Ohio.  Only New Mexico and Iowa among the Bush states was as close as the four squeakers that went for Kerry.  So the Democrats need Ohio or they need three of the next closest four--Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada—while holding on to every state they won.

A little premature, no doubt.  Meanwhile, Billy Frist, are you listening?  Don’t kowtow to the religious right.  Don’t go nuclear.  All your boot-licking will be for naught, and no one looks good down on their hands and knees. 

Not that Jeb hasn’t done his own groveling. He played his role in the Terry Schiavo circus. Is there such a thing as a dignified politician?  Eugene McCarthy erred too far in that direction, refusing to sully his integrity for anything so sordid as gaining office or getting something done.  They didn’t call him “Clean Gene” for nothing, and he supposedly said that “politics is like coaching basketball.  You have to be smart enough to play the game well, but dumb enough to think it’s important.”

Tomorrow: the Democrat’s candidate.

Posted by John McGowan on 05/17 at 04:32 PM
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