We’ve now seen Jeb Bush make what many saw as an eye-popping statement yesterday and now seen a former top advisor saying he now claims that he misunderstood the question which prompted that statement. There are some details to work through. Ana Navarro does not currently work for Gov. Bush (at least that’s my understanding), so we don’t know for certain yet whether she is speaking for him in this case or providing the campaign’s position. (This isn’t to doubt her. We just need to hear this from an official representative.) But the upshot is that Jeb Bush’s campaign is looked pretty screwed at the moment. And here’s why.
It’s bad enough that Jeb took a position which when stated out loud will be very difficult to sustain with the current US electorate. (See the chart below which is from NBC’s write-up on this topic and their poll on this question.) It’s what this day two turnabout will now necessarily bring in its wake.
Before getting to that though, let’s be honest. Of course he understood the question!
As I noted yesterday if you watch the exchange Jeb actually goes out of his way to shift the question back from ‘what we know now’ to ‘what we knew then’. So not only did he understand the question, he understood how difficult it was for him to answer and did everything he could in real time to avoid answering it.
By now switching gears and saying he misunderstood the question he appears to be committing himself to some version of “Yep, that was a mistake.” That in turn all but guarantees a major sit-down interview dedicated entirely to the issue of Iraq (awesome for the campaign!) in which Jeb will try to finesse saying that Iraq was actually a mistake and that his brother, George W. Bush, who he says advises him on Middle East policy, is responsible for what by sheer dint of its magnitude alone must be considered one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in American history.
So far so good?
It gets better!
This is turn will lead to any number of Dowdesque Bush family drama columns about tossing W under the bus, Jeb’s need to show he can be president too and maybe bringing in various other storylines about the parents, Marvin, Neil and whatever cousin or nephew goes by “Dutch” Bush or whoever else.
If he doesn’t do that – sit down and address this – he’s basically going to be asked about this awkwardly and painedly every time he gets within twenty feet of a reporter from now until he does.
A lot of people say Jeb’s rusty. He hasn’t run for office since 2002. And even though Florida is a big state, no state is like running for the presidency. I think that’s right. But I also think that, as I said yesterday, this question is kryptonite for anyone named Bush. Every option he has to deal with it is bad. And when he gets close to it he loses whatever super powers he has.
