It is to America's great credit that voters do not seem keen on electing Jeb! Bush to the presidency only two terms after his own brother made a mess of every single thing his office touched. It looks like our memories are not, in fact, nearly as addled as Bush's handlers presumed them to be—but credit must also go to
Jeb!, who at every turn seemed determined to prove to voters that he was, all along, the dumber brother.
So it makes quite a bit of sense that his latest campaign reboot is, well, just gawdawful terrible.
There are several obvious problems here. The first is that any American born after nineteen-dickity-twelve immediately associates Jeb's sparkling new catchphrase with a recent children's television show about a plucky if dead-eyed construction worker and his drug-fueled hallucinations about talking heavy machinery; in general, presidential candidates should avoid calling attention to the many similarities between themselves and cartoon/puppet/claymation/potato-based figures, since those similarities are difficult to unsee.
If you are in the United Kingdom, however, the phrase is even more associated with an infamous child molester.
By November of 2012, it was revealed that 450 alleged victims had come forward in the mere ten weeks since the police launched an investigation into Savile’s behavior. According to a BBC report from the time, of the hundreds of alleged victims, 82% were female and 80% were “children or young people.” [...]
And before all that came to light, Jimmy Savile had a wildly popular children’s show called Jim’ll Fix It.
Barring all of this unintentional baggage—nobody ever accused the Jeb! Bush campaign of being in tune with popular culture, or even the basic outlines of what people these days might be going on about—the fact remains: It's a terrible slogan. You know it. I know it.
The whole world knows it. You might have better luck with
Jeb Can Fix 'Murica, or
Jeb Can Fix Gubermint, or
Jeb Can Fix anything other than the nebulous "It."
So what's "it"? Let's hazard a few guesses. In order: His debate performances, his drying-up fundraising, his staffers' shrinking paychecks, his apparent inability to connect with voters, his ongoing awkwardness on the public stage, his familial penchant for saying stupid things in a stupid way, his inability to even properly insult Marco Rubio, and an apparent inability to hire any campaign strategist who could find their own way out of the office bathroom.
At some point this feels like picking on a baby bird. A baby bird who wants to continue his family's legacy of screwing up the economy and launching horrific wars of choice, mind you, but a baby bird. Jeb Bush has become the public laughingstock that everyone thought Donald Trump would be.
