Remember when Tony Blair begged Labour supporters not to go for Jeremy Corbyn? Remember how well that turned out?
Yesterday in South Carolina, USA, George W. Bush did something not too dissimilar. He didn’t copy Blair’s ‘even if you hate me’ line. Instead, Dubya urged his party, which is seemingly hellbent on destroying itself, to go back to the future. He encouraged them to pick another Bush, namely his brother Jeb.
It seems like madness. Everybody knows that Jeb Bush’s candidacy has from the start been crippled by his name. Americans don’t want another Bush in the White House. Republicans may not be quite as hostile towards George W. as Labour grassroots supporters are towards Blair, but they don’t want to remember the President who brought them unsuccessful wars and an economic crisis. Last year Jeb tried to dodge the issue by rebranding himself as ‘Jeb!’, but that hasn’t worked. So in recent weeks, he has changed tack and emphasised his pride in his family. He’s said his father, George H. W., the 41st president, is ‘the greatest alive’; and he’s dragged out his elderly mother Barbara to campaign for him. And now, Dubya has hit the trail in support of his brother.
Dubya’s speech wasn’t bad. He was a little doddery. He used his notes too much. But a touch of the old smirky Texan charm was there, and the crowd lapped him up. He didn’t mention Donald Trump by name, although much of the address was a series of implicit digs at the man running away with the Republican nomination. ‘I understand these are tough times and people are angry and frustrated,’ he said. ‘But we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors our anger and frustration. Strength is not bluster and theatrics. The strongest person isn’t the loudest one in the room.’
Presumably, George W. thought it would be unpresidential to stoop to Trump’s level by calling him out. But there is a point when it becomes more dignified to name the person you are attacking. And if the Bushes think that they can turn people away from Trump by emphasising their family greatness, they are deluded.
The strategy is clear. South Carolina conservatives are loyal people. They are Bush people. Barbara Bush went to school in the state. South Carolina is a military state, too. The ‘Bush lied, people died’ rhetoric, which Trump flirted with in the TV debate on Saturday night, doesn’t wash here.
But the strategy won’t necessarily work. It’s true that South Carolina Republicans don’t like arrogant, socially liberal New York billionaires. It’s true that Trump’s wild debate performance has not gone down well with movement conservative types. Rush Limbaugh, the popular talk radio host, who has previously been supportive of the Donald’s outrageous anti-PC act, accused Trump of sounding ‘like the Democrat Underground’.
A number of political experts think that the old Bush magic could still work in the south. But the latest polls suggest Jeb’s family nostalgia tour does nothing but help Trump. Yesterday’s spectacle had a certain fin de siècle feel; the Bush family comforting themselves with past glories while their party burns. The repetition of the old war-on-terror applause lines sounded hopelessly stale. When Senator Lindsey Graham, the Bush family’s booster-in-chief, thanked George W. for ‘taking the fight to the enemies of this nation’, the audience cheered. But most Americans don’t feel the same way, it seems, even in South Carolina.
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