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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Just what you wanted for Christmas: Jeb Bush!

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Dec. 17, 2014 
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No. 151
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By Jonathan V. Last
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COLD OPEN
So Jeb Bush is "exploring" a run for president. It's harder to joke about Bush III now that it's a concrete possibility, isn't it?

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A few thoughts:

* In the same way that Jon Lester's signing with the Cubs set off a chain reaction in baseball's free agent market, I expect that Jeb's move will have a clarifying effect in the Republican primary field. Here's my buddy Adam White working through the analogy:

Last week, pitcher Jon Lester announced that he was signing a 6-year, $155 million deal with the Cubs. On Tuesday, Jeb Bush announced that he's beginning to run for president. These two things have a lot in common.

Lester's signing was the single most important moment of baseball's offseason. I don't mean that Lester is the best player on the market this winter. He's not even the best pitcher on the market-that honor probably goes to Max Scherzer. But Lester's signing unlocked the winter logjam, sending a variety of other forces into motion, each with its own rippling consequences (as ESPN's Buster Olney, among others, has explained).

Lester signing with the Cubs caused the runner-up, the Boston Red Sox, to turn around and pick up three lower-tier pitchers. And the Sox now also must consider trading major prospects for a top-tier pitcher-to the Phillies for Cole Hamels or the Nationals for Jordan Zimmerman. Similarly, the Giants (another failed suitor) may throw a ton of money at pitcher James Shields.

Meanwhile, Max Scherzer, the best pitcher on the market, has been sitting on the sidelines with super-agent Scott Boras, waiting to see how things shake out. The Lester signing means everything to him, because that 6-year, $155 million deal sets the baseline at which Scherzer's talks with other teams will begin. On the other hand, the Lester deal makes top-tier starting pitching so expensive that other teams may decide that the more cost-effective play is to wait until May or June and then trade for one of the starting pitchers that become free agents in next winter's bumper crop : David Price, Jordan Zimmerman, Johnny Cueto, and so on.

All of those pitchers would find homes regardless of where Jon Lester signed, but Lester's signing is the catalyst that, in Buster Olney's words, sets the other wheels in motion. Other free agents-a lot of non-pitchers-had already signed contracts, some for big money. But Lester's decision was the one that the league was really waiting for, then one with the most significant repercussions.

The same can be said for Jeb Bush's announcement. His sticking at least one foot into the ring will set into motion a wave of other forces. (To mix a whole bunch of metaphors.)

* So what about those other forces: Chris Christie's campaign may now be over before it started. It's not clear that there's room in the race for two "truth-telling" establishment figures who have positioned themselves as guys with access to the donor class who aren't afraid to go against the base.

Jeb's candidacy should end any doubts about whether or not the mess on the George Washington Bridge wounded Christie. I suspect that minus that incident, Republican donors would be solidly with Christie, and Jeb would have stayed away from the race.

(By the by, here's a reasonably persuasive appraisal of Christie's liabilities irrespective of Bush. And it doesn't even mention the collapse of Atlantic City, which could be a big problem for Christie if his opponents were to wield it correctly.)

* Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are, to a degree, strengthened by a Bush candidacy. I suspect that, given the choice of running against Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney as the champion of the establishment, they would prefer Jeb. He's at odds with the base on both immigration and Common Core, and his dynastic legacy could, in theory, be used against him with more independent-minded primary voters.

* The big question is whether Jeb's network in Florida and connection to the national moneymen are sufficiently overwhelming to deny Marco Rubio the cash he'd need to make a credible run. Rubio's only significant liability in the primary was his position on the Gang of 8 immigration bill. Obama's executive amnesty actually helps Rubio in that it gives him a foil in immigration discussions and allows him to re-position himself in light of this big reshuffling of the deck.

* Just kidding: The really big question is what happens now with Romney.

When Republicans consoled themselves after 2012, one of their most soothing balms was a belief that, however bad President Obama's reelection was, at least the GOP would finally turn the book on the Bush and Romney years come 2016. The party was going to move into the future with someone new. Maybe it would be Marco Rubio or Chris Christie or Bobby Jindal. Maybe Rand Paul. Maybe Scott Walker. Maybe even Mike Pence. Or somebody else entirely.

Now maybe this new future wouldn't be very good either. But at least it would be different. At least it would be a turning of the page. At least the party would finally move on from three very bad presidential cycles dominated by Bush and Romney. At least . . .

Oh.

Yet if the idea of either a Bush III or a Romney 3.0 campaign was depressing, the prospect of a campaign with both of them is fantastic. And it is, after all, Christmas. So let's think about something more cheerful: A campaign pitting Bush III against Romney 3.0!

This joust carries with it so much potential for establishment catastrophe that it calls to mind the epic ship collision in Speed 2.

Here's hoping for a Christmas miracle.





LOOKING BACK
"The archbishop of Canterbury is going to resign next year. At least that's the story making the rounds of newspapers in London, and the interesting part is not that the 61-year-old Rowan Williams should be willing to give up another decade in the job. Or even, if the Telegraph is right, that the clergy and his fellow bishops are working to push him out.

"No, the interesting news about the looming resignation is how little attention anyone appears to be paying to it. The Church of England just doesn't seem to matter all that much, fading from the world's stage only slightly more slowly than the British Empire that planted it across the globe."

-Joseph Bottum, "The End of Canterbury" from our December 19, 2011, issue.

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On Orwell, as a journalist.
INSTANT CLASSIC
"Richard Just, the editor at the time, had the unenviable choice of trying to find a savior for the magazine or watching it die slowly. Just, who now runs National Journal magazine, started as the online editor in 2004 and had worked his way up the print masthead to the top position, where he garnered T.N.R.'s first National Magazine Award nomination for general excellence in twenty years. He was determined to find a new buyer and save the institution. A mutual friend connected Just and Hughes via e-mail. They had breakfast in New York, and when Just returned to Washington he told Wieseltier that he thought they had found their buyer. Just, Wieseltier, and Hughes spent the next four months discussing the details.

"'In retrospect, it was too good to be true,' someone with knowledge of the talks said. 'Chris said all the right things about not wanting to control.'

"Days before the sale was finalized, on a conference call about the announcement, a public-relations consultant Hughes had brought in to manage the transition made a passing reference to Hughes becoming T.N.R.'s new editor-in-chief. Hughes had never told Just that he was taking the title.

"Just, who was on the call, was blindsided. He told Hughes that it was a mistake, explaining that under Martin Peretz, the magazine's highly controversial owner and editor-in-chief from 1974 to 2007, T.N.R. was seen as a rich guy's plaything, and that Peretz's personal politics and vituperative writing and management style had often overshadowed the good work of the magazine. . . . Just argued that Hughes, a major Democratic donor whose husband would later run for office, might be accused of turning the magazine into a vanity project. Hughes listened, but said that he would keep the editor-in-chief title. Just, worried they had made a terrible mistake, took his concerns to Larry Grafstein, a Wall Street banker and the chairman of the magazine's group of investors. He told Grafstein that they should consider blocking the sale, but it was too late.

"Two days after Hughes purchased T.N.R., he informed Just that, as editor-in-chief, he would now write half of the magazine's editorials. Just could write the other half, but Hughes would clear them."

-Ryan Lizza on the implosion of the New Republic, December 12, 2014.
THE LAST WORD
Before we move on, one final note of reminder on Mitt Romney: Anyone with a fondness for black comedy should hope he runs. One of my favorite Romney moments came in September of 2011 when, in successive weeks, he uttered the following two defenses of himself:

"I stand by my positions. I'm proud of them."

And then, the next week: "In the private sector, if you don't change your view when the facts change, well you'll get fired for being stubborn and stupid. Winston Churchill said, 'When the facts change I change too, Madam. What do you do?'"

In other words, he defended against the charge of flip-flopping, by flip-flopping.

You can't make it up.

In any event, if you're looking around for last-minute Christmas gifts (or really last-minute Hanukkah gifts) I'm giving you one final plug for The Seven Deadly Virtues.

Last week the Washington Post's Michael Dirda very kindly listed it as one of his twelve books to give for the holidays, saying, "While this is professedly a volume of comic essays by 18 conservative writers, even a hard-core lefty would enjoy Joe Queenan on thrift, Christopher Buckley on perseverance, Rita Koganzon on honesty, Mollie Hemingway on charity, James Lileks on hoarding and similar match-ups, starting with an introductory piece on the 'The Seven Deadly Virtues and the New York Times' by P.J. O'Rourke."

Whether the people on your list are nice WEEKLY STANDARD lovers or naughty (but lovable) liberals, they'll love The Seven Deadly Virtues.

Have a happy Hanukkah and a wonderful, blessed Christmas.

Best,
Jonathan V. Last

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