Woah, I’m actually going to disagree with the inimitable Charles Pierce, talking about Jeb Bush:
Of all the candidates in this election, Jeb (!) is the most poignant figure of all. He had the money and he had the establishment credentials and he had the sharp people to run his campaign for him, and they were supposed to have been sharp enough even to save him from the damage to the family brand wrought by his older brother during the eight years of the Avignon Presidency. What he did not reckon with was being made into a figure of ridicule by a vulgar talking yam and his campaign without conscience. Jeb (!) is the only Republican that He, Trump mentions by name at his rallies, and only then as a punchline. Jeb (!) was ready for anything but that.
Jeb may have had the money and the establishment and the consultants, but he wasn’t ready from day one. Remember those early days?
Kelly: Obviously very controversial. Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?
Bush: I would have.
From the start, Jeb! was incapable of answering the one question he and everyone around him should’ve known was coming. It was such a disastrous first step out of the gate, that his surrogates had to go out claiming that he had “misheard” the question. He wasn’t ready for questions about his brother’s lineage, both embracing and distancing himself from the “Bush” name on any given day, never with any rhyme or reason.
He was not ready for Trump, sure, but he also wasn’t ready for a lightweight like Marco Rubio. He wasn’t ready for the debates. He wasn’t ready to defend his tax plan. He wasn’t ready to discuss the pernicious effects of the conservative gun fetish. He wasn’t even ready to fix his flailing campaign.
Bottom line, he thought all that money and personnel and connections would grease his path to the White House. But in the end, nothing about him, personally, was ever ready for this campaign.