Over and over, his ad-libbed answers have created distracting kerfuffles (witness his claim that Americans “need to work longer hours”) and, worse, drawn-out controversies (see his handling of a question about the invasion of Iraq).
Now, on the cusp of Thursday’s prime-time Republican debate, his team is grappling with an uncomfortable but inevitable question: Is Jeb his own worst enemy in the Republican contest?
Tuesday’s errant remark about women’s health funding is a case study in the dangers of letting Jeb be Jeb. It was as if Mr. Bush was doing rough math in his head – what to do with $500 million in federal funding he wants to strip from Planned Parenthood? – but instead he was on a stage, thinking aloud. And so all the world heard him utter words that no candidate for president wants to say on camera: “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.” (He has since said he “misspoke.” But the video lives on, tweeted and retweeted into eternity.)
Political mayhem ensued, just as it did when Mr. Bush talked about the productivity of the American worker.
Jeb the policy maven has not quite reconciled with Jeb the presidential candidate, as his own aides more or less concede.
In their minds, this is a source of pride – it’s what makes Mr. Bush authentic. But it is just as much a liability that will create the kind of video footage that can be lethal in a negative campaign advertisement.
At Thursday’s debate in Cleveland, the two Jebs will share a very prominent stage, and it will be fascinating to see which one wins the tug-of-war.
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