Going into the latest debate, the trending question about Jeb Bush on Google was whether he was “still running for president.”The answer is yes, and on Tuesday night, he tried, yet again, to put an exclamation point on it.
After a week of fresh attention to the rococo psychology of the Bush dynasty, after huddles with new media advisers, after countless requiems for his campaign, Bush gave his troubled, increasingly quixotic quest one more shot, maybe his last.
But he couldn’t quite run. The best that Bush has in him, in the end, is a vigorous limp.
He started the night well, staring down Donald Trump on the question of illegal immigration and sarcastically thanking Trump for giving him some speaking time.
“What a generous man you are,” he told Trump before going on to attack his supposed plan to deport millions of immigrants as wrong and mean.
“It’s not embracing American values and it would tear communities apart,” Bush said emphatically.
But during a subsequent argument over federal spending, one in which the insertion of Bush’s voice would have made complete sense, he stood mute, unable to find a way into the discussion even as John Kasich successfully butted in and took up residence there.
And in the second half of the debate, when Bush said that Trump’s statements about Vladimir Putin, Syria and the Islamic State made the world sound like “a board game,” he had his thunder stolen by Carly Fiorina.
She went bolder, louder and snarkier, noting that when she met Putin it was “not in a green room.” She thus dismissed Trump as nothing more than a frivolous TV presence, a talking head with a tepee of hair.
And she really got under his skin.
“Why does she keep interrupting everybody?” Trump said, seemingly forgetting that he’d been trying to make nice with her ever since that sexist, ugly comment about her face. He was booed.
And it wasn’t the first time.
Earlier, when he spat out some nastiness at Kasich, there were also boos.
Trump’s bullying is getting as old as his bellicosity is wearing thin, and this debate, the fourth meeting of Republican candidates, made that abundantly clear.
Here’s what else came into focus:Kasich and Bush have each made a firm, last-ditch decision to play the seasoned, reasonable veteran among interlopers spouting nonsense and hard-core conservatives who could never beat Hillary Clinton. Sadly for Bush, Kasich played the part with more passion.
“On-the-job training for president of the United States doesn’t work,” Kasich said, alluding to President Obama and taking a dig at Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz without mentioning their names.
Rubio is not just smooth but clever and disciplined. Eager to live up to the buzz that he’s really the front-runner, and even more eager to put to rest the chatter that he’s too young and callow, he stood tallest and spoke most forcefully when talking about issues of global leadership. It was as if he’d come dressed in a T-shirt that said “Commander in Chief.”But he was scary, charting a course of unrestrained interventionism, and when he fielded a final question about how he’d stack up to Clinton, he reverted to talking points.
Cruz then grabbed the ball, skewering Clinton more sharply and showing that he could out-eloquent Rubio and out-nasty anyone. Has a young politician ever managed to be so impressive and so repulsive all at once?That’s the fascination of Cruz, and the most fun Tuesday night was his stumble on the very ground that tripped up Rick Perry four years ago. During a debate back then, Perry said he wanted to eliminate three federal departments or agencies and could name only two. Cruz said he wanted to eliminate five and named the Commerce Department twice.
Neither Cruz nor Rubio did anything to destroy the momentum they carried out of the last debate. Fiorina may get another brief bounce. And Ben Carson? He was again so low-key he almost seemed sleepy. He sounded utterly out of his depth on foreign policy. But he wasn’t rattled at all by a question (too brief, with no follow-up) about his exaggerated autobiography. He meanders on.
The stage was strangely denuded, like a forest after overzealous logging. There were eight contenders where there had once been 11 — back in the glory days of Scott Walker.
Even so, Bush couldn’t and didn’t stand out the way he, more than anyone else, really needed to.
He can take some solace though, in the No. 1 questions about two rivals that were trending on Google.
“Who is Rand Paul?” was one.
And the other, my favorite: “Why do Republicans hate Ted Cruz?”
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