In the Art of War, Sun Tzu provided the following wisdom:
So, it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
When it comes to Jeb Bush’s understanding of Donald Trump, let’s just say that he really doesn’t have a clue.
Now, those close to his campaign say, Bush, who has taken on the mantle of frontrunner, is bracing for the possibility of a presidential debate pile-on — with Trump leading the charge.
Gaming out how Trump — a bombastic figure who refuses to abide by usual the rules of political decorum — will present himself has become a growing subject of speculation in Bush’s world.
During one recent phone call with a political ally, Bush pointedly asked about the surging real estate mogul. What, the friend recalled the former governor wondering out loud, was behind Trump’s antics, and what was he trying to accomplish?
I don’t think Jeb is alone in being perplexed about Donald Trump’s motives for running for president, but if he doesn’t know what’s driving Trump he’s going to have a hell of a time dodging his hand grenades.
“Trump presents a challenge for Bush because he’s a hand grenade,” said Nelson Warfield, a longtime Republican strategist who has prepared a number of candidates for debates. “His people understand that and will be prepared for anything that comes their way.”
As the Aug. 6 debate grows closer, some Republicans are relishing the prospect of Trump tearing the bark off the former governor — or, at the very least, trying to trip him up. “Trump has one target and one target only,” said an adviser to a rival GOP candidate. “He’s going to bring a lawn mower for Bush.”
Maybe Trump really is best understood as a hand grenade, in which case the damage he does will be somewhat equally dispersed but will also (by random chance) injure some more than others. On the other hand, maybe Trump is better understood as a heat-seeking missile who is locked in on Jeb, and really only on Jeb. If that’s the case, he should be a little more predictable and easier to parry.
In this Politico piece, we can see that advisers to rival GOP candidates are hoping that Trump is in this latter category, and it could be that they are correct.
Now, I know that politicians will say anything and we’re fools to take many of their utterances at face value. But if Jeb believes any part of the following, he doesn’t know his party and may not even know himself:
If Trump is a danger for Bush, some close to the former governor say, he also presents opportunity. The debate will give Bush a national platform to take on Trump in strong terms, presenting himself as a mature, substantive leader who rises above toxic discourse. Bush may have hinted at that approach during a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday. “Whether it’s Donald Trump or Barack Obama, their rhetoric of divisiveness is wrong,” the former governor said. “A Republican will never win by striking fear in people’s hearts.”
Jeb should take a look around and even listen to himself as one Republican after another tells the public that we’re all going to die because the president has reached an agreement with Iran on their nuclear program. We’re all going to die if even one prisoner at Gitmo is brought here to stand trial or serve time. We’re all going to die if we don’t invade Iraq and take away their WMD. We’re all going to die if we don’t reinvade Iraq and now Syria to deal with ISIS. We’re all going to die if we give one inch to the commies in Korea or Vietnam or Angola or Cuba or Nicaragua.
And if we’re not going to die, then our culture and our religion are going to die. Our freedom is going to die. Our guns will be confiscated. Our children will be indoctrinated.
Striking fear into the hearts of Americans is pretty much all Fox News does, all day long, every day. There are almost two dozen Republican candidates for the presidency, and every single one of them is out there saying that our whole way of life is going to be destroyed.
Go ahead and try to find me the positive, Reaganesque messaging from these folks. I know Jeb aspires to be that guy, but he’s just not. And he’s going to get his ass kicked in the primaries if he doesn’t begin to understand why the crap Trump is pulling has launched him into a lead in the polls among Republicans.
Dubya once cracked this nut with a “compassionate conservative” gambit that was about as fraudulent as daddy’s thousand points of light. But the current mood of the Republican base is the farthest thing there is away from “compassionate.”
Does Jeb understand what made his father successful (exploiting amnestied black rapists) and his brother successful (buy duct tape, plastic sheeting, and bottled water!)?
Does he know himself and his political clan well enough to understand what needs to be done to capture the hearts of the Republican right?
Because, if he doesn’t, he will always endanger himself when he goes into these debates. And it isn’t only Trump that he needs to worry about.
He’s going to be on a stage with nine other Republicans, none of whom are under the misimpression that the base seeks “a mature, substantive leader who rises above toxic discourse” or whom believe that “the rhetoric of divisiveness is wrong.”
If Sun Tzu was right, Jeb could be headed for Little Bighorn.
Sorry about lost comments. I accidentally deleted this while trying to fix messed up double formatting.
the Jeb campaign has really started to refute the old conventional wisdom that he was the smarter brother.
Jeb(!) screwed up in FL — he promised big-bro that he would win it handily. And after using every dirty trick in the book, they still had to go whine and plead their case to their BFFs on SCOTUS.
The Bush family hasn’t needed smarts, which they don’t possess, to get by; just connections which they have plenty of.
However, they lost a lot of good connections in 1944.
hah! nice one
ROFL, ouch, man. Would you care to pass the ointment after delivering that sick burn?
It’s commentary like this that keeps me coming back to this site.
I think Jeb can never walk back the thing where it took him a week to answer whether he would have invaded Iraq. This was the defining moment – the point where many did say ‘maybe he’s NOT the smart one after all’.
The bar is VERY high for Jeb at these debates, for sure. If they all shoot at him, including The Donald, it will really be something.
(If I were The Donald I might stash the crazy for the debate. That would be a curve ball all right.)
The Donald has cost the GOP the entire hispanic vote. All that’s left is old white Cubans. I’m clueless as to what the GOP could do now to win a national election.
BENGHAZI!
Ill-timed economic calamity, foreign policy blunder, or Democratic scandal. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve been humping 1 and 3 extra hard lately and they’re really looking for an ‘in’ on number 2.
The problem with that strategy is… well, why don’t we ask the Democratic Party of 1972-1992 how well that worked for them?
All that said, Jeb! has the simoleons to survive the winnowing process. Last man standing was the story last time.
[Pedantry alert. Should be ” nor
whomwho believe that “the rhetoric of divisiveness is wrong,” as you have shifted to nominal case. Also, should be nor, not or. It is correctly “none of whom” because that’s objective case with “none” being the nominal.]nice grammar alert. can you help me advocate against “wanna” and “gonna”? thanks in advance
–Lost the comment I was responding to and agreeing that tRump isn’t a heat seeking missile for anti-Jeb forces* and is in it to win. —
tRump is a year older than Clinton and she has nice hair.
He’s been laying the groundwork for six years as the biggest and baddest teabagger. At least when the competition is weak and he gets most of the TV air time. He waited until the line-up was set and he could evaluate all the competition before jumping in.
His major stumbling block may, oddly enough, be money. The only billionaire that seems to be in his corner is himself — and his liquid assets are likely limited and he’s sort of a cheapskate. But he does have assets that are useful for a campaign. A 757, a helicopter, and oodles of campaign fundraising venues.
Tactically, it does make sense first to clear the field of all but the teabaggery folks; if one likes one’s chances against the other teabaggers. (We see something similar in operation on the DEM side of the aisle; only much earlier as authentic potential challengers were scared off.) The order of getting their heads on the chopping block is TBD, except for Jeb(!) who is first.
What, IMHO, he discounts far too much are his high negatives. They are more intractable than low positives. (This is also why Clinton is weaker than she appears to be.)
*Possibly a more common tactic than observers can identify.
I literally never thought of that–I can’t quite get past thinking of him as a cartoon character–but it’s starting to make sense. Reading above, I was wondering how he could be specifically aiming at JEB unless someone like Adelson was paying him, and who could be paying him? But if he really wanted to win, that’s what he’d do. Also the burning of all his TV bridges seems like a terrible career move for anybody like him, but gets him great press among people like Iowa Republicans.
Gets him lots and lots of FREE press.
So, what if his crappy businesses take a few hits in the short-term, when one can live like true royalty as POTUS and after that it’s KA-CHING!
If Michelle Obama can be touted as a style icon, imagine what can be done with his wife and two grown daughters. Then he still has the little ones to parade around for the “Oh, aren’t they just too cute.”
In polling there is a minor sign that Jeb! could be helped by Trump. The firebrands generally don’t with the nomination – and it may look Jeb! appear moderate by comparison.
One thing Trump DOES is repeat something seen often in GOP primaries – a right vote split among a number of candidates.
The Bush Crime Family thought that once they had disposed of Willard it would be smooth sailing for Jeb.
I find all of this amusing.
“A Republican will never win by striking fear in people’s hearts.”–Jeb! Bush
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”–GW Bush, Aug 5, 2004
So, Arthur Gilroy complains often that The Two Parties Are Both The PermaGov. He is particularly sharp in his complaints about the sameness of the military and defense policies.
Yet, at one of the many moments like this during the current Presidency, after Obama has successfully faced down people in his Administration, among the clown car of GOP Presidential candidates, in and around Congress, in the Village, in the mainstream media, and in Real America, who demand war and are met by yet another successful Administration execution of a difficult diplomatic mission, Arthur’s got nothing to say.
We can observe by the reaction from the two Parties, from the two Movements, that they are Not The Same, not at all.
But you can be sure AG will be back, talking major shit about Obama’s militarism and lecturing BooMan and the rest of us about what poor excuses for leftists we are. All the while telling us how valuable the Paul movement is, and how Voter ID is a good thing, and how Cliven Bundy had a point.
Really, FTG.
White House reportedly offers to boost military aid to Israel after Iran deal. (This was reported as in the works at least a month and a half ago.)
Democrats have a habit of not looking at all the fine print and little poison bits in their praise for modest and seemingly positive accomplishments by Democratic administrations. They’re still running around touting the bestest economic performance ever under Clinton. When it was mostly smoke and mirrors that came back big time to butt us in the butt not once but twice in less than a decade.
To be fair the government does recommend you keep a 3-4 day supply of bottled water in case of natural disaster where you ate trapped with no services.
Or does Jeb Bush seem as wussy and unpresidential as Romney? When Bush beat Kerry, I became cynically convinced that America’s moronic majority will always vote as they would have for Jr. High School Class President. Let’s rank each pair of candidates by the sole criterion of how comfortable he or she feels in his or her own skin
JFK > Nixon
(Nixon and Humphrey is a wash)
Carter > Ford
Reagan > Carter, Mondale
Anybody > Dukakis
Clinton > Bush I, Dole
Bush II > Gore, Kerry
Obama > Romney
The only loser who could be considered comfortable in his own skin was McCain (with the caveat that I don’t remember what McGovern and Goldwater were like – I think they both lost because they were at one extreme of the political spectrum at a time when the electorate was at the other – and most people thought Goldwater was going to start WWIII, which was a very palpable fear at the time).
Hillary is sort of on the fence – she’s certainly not as CIHOS (comfortable in his/her own skin) as Obama, but much more so that Kerry, Gore, or Dukakis … or Jeb Bush who is by far the geekiest and most awkward of the Bushes. Family name nothwithstanding, Jeb Bush seems profoundly unpresidential to me.
Digging deeper into the back bench, the GOP has a third “type” not often present in the democratic party – the angry type A blowhard – Trump, Christie, Cruz – I don’t think that type can win in the national. Of the others, Santorum, Fiorina, Jindal, Graham and Rubio can be dismissed out of hand by my CIHOS metric. Huckabee is disqualified by reason of religious insanity; Carson by reason of general insanity. That leaves Walker and Kasich, neither of whom seems particularly CIHOS, but both of whom surpass Bush.
And the pundits think the GOP has a strong field??
You’re not alone in perceiving Jeb(!) as wussy. Will have to wait for the debates to see if he can carry off the “I’m the adult in this crowd” as well as Romney did.
Me like the CIHOS model. However, as you’ve implied, it’s comparative and not strictly an inherent quality. Would also note that its not consistent across setting. For example, Dean’s CIHOS was high when delivering a speech and low in debates.
I’d say that McGovern’s CIHOS was high, but he and his campaign unraveled over the Eagleton mess. The reality is that Eagleton was far more stable and qualified to be VP than many other VP nominees. But the public perception wasn’t in line with reality. Added to that was he could sense something “off” about his opponent’s campaign but had no ability to see much less define the dirty tricks. Finally, there were all the DEM Party elites undermining his campaign.
In his time, Goldwater would be like Cruz today.
It also occurs to me that on public stages high self-worth lowers CIHOS. Arrogance divides a candidate from the audience and is easily perceived as awkwardness in speech and body language.