Jeb Bush: The Forrest Gump of Financial Improprieties?

The Financial Times has an unusual story featured prominently today. As Jeb Bush has made a soft launch of his presidential campaign, the pink paper has published a surprisingly long list of financial relationships that do not put the Florida governor in a particularly good light.

The intriguing part isn’t so much a history of dubious-looking complicated money dealings. It’s the fact that many of them are live. Jeb apparently couldn’t be bothered to clean them up. That strategy didn’t work too well for Mitt Romney, who was forced effectively to admit that his wife Ann Romney’s Olympic horse Rafalca was not a business and hence not a permissible deduction on the Romney tax returns. There was also the consternation over his failure to release five years of tax returns as would have been customary. Some theorized that it was because Romney paid no taxes in those years, but the guess among tax experts was that Romney had declared a formerly secret Swiss bank account under an amnesty program. One of the conditions of getting amnesty was refiling prior year tax returns. Those returns would be “stapled,” as in they would clearly show that the returns had originally been filed not showing the Swiss bank account, and then had been amended to included it.

The issue revealed by the Romney tax return debate, as well as the consternation about his remarks at a supposedly closed-door speech where he derided the non-income-taxpaying 47% of the US (which includes the unemployed, students and people who make too little income to be subject to income taxes but nevertheless pay FICA and sales taxes) is that even rich Republicans are not immune from scrutiny as to their financial conduct and their implicit or explicit attitude towards the non-wealthy. Despite the stereotype, not all Republican voters are rich. For instance, evangelical Christians are not the power in the party that they once were but are still far more inclined to vote Republican than Democrat.

So the issue with Jeb isn’t who he’s been in bed with financially, per se, but that he couldn’t be bothered to tidy up his record.

For my money, the stunner comes late in the article: Jeb is currently an advisor to Barclays. These big misbehaving banks tend to become all of a muchness over time, so to refresh your memory, Barclays was a central actor in the Libor price-rigging scandal. Its efforts to defy the Bank of England and implicate Paul Tucker, the heir apparent to the Governor Mervyn King’s job, led the Bank of England to force the resignation of the top three officers at Barclays, its chairman, CEO, and president. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has filed criminal charges against three Barclays officers; one of them has been indicted in the US. The SFO is also investigating a 2008 equity infusion from the Qatar sovereign wealth fund that Barclays used to just escape a taxpayer rescue. The allegation is that Barclays paid fees to Qatar that were really tantamount to bribes and that the sovereign wealth fund and Challenger, the prime minister’s investment company, worked with Barclays to misrepresent its financial condition to regulators and the public.

But this should come as no surprise, given that Jeb was also an advisor to Lehman, and managed to dodge the bullet of being asked to intervene with his brother the President on behalf of the floundering investment bank (Dick Fuld apparently considered it when Barclays was ready to throw a lifeline but the board had imposed conditions that the Fed and Treasury weren’t prepared to meet).

As juicy but less easy to pick apart are the Jeb Bush private equity dealings, which he appears to have tried to hide as opposed to exit. BusinessWeek broke the story:

Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 27 list Bush as chairman and manager of a new offshore private equity fund, BH Global Aviation, which raised $61 million in September, largely from foreign ­investors. In November the fund ­incorporated in the United Kingdom and Wales­—a ­structure, several independent finance lawyers say, that operates like a tax haven by allowing overseas investors to avoid U.S. taxes and regulations.

BH Global Aviation is one of at least three such funds Bush has launched in less than two years through his Coral Gables, Fla., company, Britton Hill Holdings. He’s also chairman of a $26 million fund, BH Logistics, established in April with backing from a Chinese conglomerate, and a $40 million fund involved in shale oil exploration, according to documents filed in June and first ­reported on by Bloomberg News. His flurry of ventures doesn’t suggest someone preparing to run for president, according to a dozen fund managers, lawyers, and ­private-placement agents who were ­apprised of his recent activities by Bloomberg Businessweek. Most private equity funds have a life span of 10 years. While it isn’t impossible that Bush could bail on his investors so soon after taking their money, “that would be unusual,” says Steven Kaplan, a private equity expert at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. One fundraiser for private equity adds that normally you’d be winding down such businesses, rather than expanding them, if you were going to run.

The Financial Times added:

A trawl through corporate filings in Florida and Delaware show that Mr Bush and his partners have launched more than a half dozen investment entities under the “Britton Hill” or “BH” moniker (named after the highest point in the state of Florida) since 2008, several of which have only been set up in the past two years.

Almost all are registered at the same address at the Biltmore hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, where Mr Bush has long held an office.

While details of the total amount of money raised and the funds’ activities remain scarce, as private companies, what is publicly available show Britton Hill-linked investments have included natural gas and aviation, some in tandem with foreign investors.

Mr Bush is also a partner in “Three B Partners” with former General Motors executive Lawrence Burns, one of the leading advocates of the transformative potential of driverless cars.

While none of Mr Bush’s private equity ventures are of the size and scale that are likely to leave him vulnerable to the same kinds of charges Mr Romney faced over asset stripping and job destruction, Republican strategists have expressed concerns over his failure to close down such an obvious avenue of attack.

“Why wouldn’t you just clean this up in advance, after what happened to Mitt?” said one. “It just seems foolhardy.”

Mind you, these events come after Jeb Bush is believed to have had to defer as presidential candidate to his less-favored-within-the-family brother George, with the causes believed to be having the government pick up most of the tab on a bad real estate loan made via a savings and loan that failed* and his wife’s failure to declare to Customs her haul from a $20,000 shopping spree in Paris.

Notice that the dismay comes from the Republican camp. Mind you, it isn’t as if prominent Democrats are clean as the driven snow. It is remarkable that Turbo Timmy not only failed to clean up his non-reporting of IMF income prior to his nomination to the Treasury Secretary post, but then was cheeky enough to not pay back the underpayment that was past the statute of limitations. Played like the banker he is. And is is hard to beat Hillary Clinton’s astonishing success as a novice commodities trader in parlaying a $1000 stake into $100,000.

We’ll see in the coming months whether these improprieties make a dent in Jeb Bush’s prospects. But they are own goals and suggest a lack of seriousness about his campaign, or that Jeb assumes that the Bush name gives him more advantage than it actually does. If so, that attitude will probably show up in other gaffes.

____
* The controversy was not that the bailout was made on sweetheart terms but that the original loan was, leaving the FDIC in receivership no leverage to force a better deal. The FDIC sued over the original loan.

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65 comments

  1. ambrit

    Is this the best the Republicans can do? Either that, or the value of public opinion to the Republican elites has dropped to zero. That in itself is reason to worry.

    1. sleepy

      Or perhaps, with some exception, the only players in either party who have the political clout to pull off a presidential run are necessarily those who are also players in financial schemes.

      1. ambrit

        The financialization of politics writ large. The imposition of financial constraints upon politics negates the underlying rationale for participatory democracy. Thus, the only effective reason left for ordinary people to take the State seriously is the fear of state sanctioned violence.
        The bothersome part is that the Elites haven’t just lost the moral high ground, but that they are renouncing morality in its’ entirety. Legitimacy is now based exclusively on force. Trouble ahead.

        1. sleepy

          “The financialization of politics writ large. The imposition of financial constraints upon politics negates the underlying rationale for participatory democracy.”

          aka running government like a business.

          1. susan the other

            Yes. In the dialectics of control, first it’s economix, if economix isn’t workin’ then it becomes politix, and when that fails to convince anybody it’s war. No?

        2. James

          But as we’ve seen, force + corruption is working pretty well. All things considered, a bullet in the head is a pretty convincing argument.

          1. ambrit

            The trouble with that, from an elites’ point of view is that the bullet doesn’t care whose head it transits.
            (A sign of the times. I was going to append a bit of snark when I thought of the HS search algorithms working away 24/7 in a basement somewhere out in Utah. Thus, I self censored. Welcome to the NWO comrades!)

              1. ambrit

                Now we have to figure out how to create a false “legend” of anarcho leanings for some of our favourite right wingers.

        1. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

          I’m just wondering what our leader options are telling us about the state of our Republic. America has incredible businessmen, visionary leaders in medicine, software, charity, and many other fields, if we were a civic-minded people, with a shared commitment to a common good, surely some would have surfaced, presented us an alternative and received a swelling tide of support? Instead we get these goons, corporo-fascists of the worst sort, now brazenly and openly serving solely the whims of their .01% masters. It’s like we’re Myanmar, the struggling populace cowering under the thumb of a military junta with no real option (I almost said “hope”) for change. The junta periodically just rotates the face at the top while brutally suppressing any attempts at change, and full time plunder of the land, its people, and its riches continues on year in and year out without skipping a beat.

    2. Ben Johannson

      There is no one left uninvolved with shady finance. Getting rich quick is why people go into American politics these days.

    3. Northeaster

      The Republicans are splintered: Neocon Republicans, true conservatives, and The TEA Party.

      No way all three will get behind any one particular candidate from one of those groups, and that’s before we even touch Electoral Votes. They need six states with high Electoral counts to even put up a challenge to whoever Democrats put up – Killary walks in if she wants it, heck, a rock labeled a Democrat would win at this point. Now that CONgress is a defacto subsidiary of Wall Street, does it even matter?

      1. James

        As opposed to that Rock of Ages the D Party? HillBillary has big money behind her, but not much else. I see a pretty interesting match coming up in 2016, if only for all the interfamilial mud slinging. And since we’ll all likely be out of work by then anyway, it might be the only show in town.

        1. Ulysses

          The looming Jeb/Hillary smackdown, with all the attendant kayfabe, and desperate attempts to distract the voters from the fact that we are now subjects of a unified kleptocratic regime, reminds me of the War of the Roses. The Lancaster/York branches of the Plantagenet line weren’t anything more than standards– around which competing “noble” factions could rally to grab the juiciest spoils of 15th c. England.

          Perhaps this whole neo- feudal drama will resolve itself when Chelsea Clinton’s daughter, Charlotte, is married off to a scion of the Bushes a couple of decades hence. This solution worked pretty well for the Lancastrian Henry Tudor (Henry VII) when he married Elizabeth of York!

            1. Ulysses

              I know– that is precious!!

              I think GG yesterday had a pretty sound, big-picture take on all of this:

              “Having someone who is the brother of one former president and the son of another run against the wife of still another former president would be sweetly illustrative of all sorts of degraded and illusory aspects of American life, from meritocracy to class mobility. That one of those two families exploited its vast wealth to obtain political power, while the other exploited its political power to obtain vast wealth, makes it more illustrative still: of the virtually complete merger between political and economic power, of the fundamentally oligarchical framework that drives American political life.”

              https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/17/jeb-bush-v-hillary-clinton-perfectly-illustrative-election/

              1. steelhead23

                Thanks for the link Ulysses. To be honest, unless the Republicans nominate Ron Paul, I really couldn’t care less who they nominate, but as regards the Democrats, I am firmly in the anybody but Hillary camp, in part for the reasons you allude to – fear of neo-feudalism, but mostly because she’s more Obama without the charisma.

      2. neo-realist

        A half decent republican candidate can go on a national campaign to middle America, tell the goobers that he’s for Jesus, low taxes, and gun rights and he’s sown up a considerable number of votes. The winning margin gets cobbled together through playing the safety/terrorist card against brown skinned muslims and voter fraud.

    4. NotTimothyGeithner

      Yes. Most pundits spend most of their time mocking Team R voters and have largely ignored the actual divide in Team R. GOP voters auditioned every creep and loser to avoid Mittens who needed Mormon strength out west to keep a strong challenge from forming, and even then, Santorum made a late surge. Dubya wasn’t a phony. He really was a drunk who turned his life around and was a black sheep, but he was as blue blood as one gets. His grandparents were nazis after all. The GOP elite need an elite candidate, but they need someone who can appeal to Palin enthusiasts without being Palin. The GOP congressional caucus and their governors are more Palin than Mittens. The Blue Bloods don’t have a deep bench who can win. Jeb is their best hope.

      1. McMike

        We are entering the Era of Dropped Pretenses.

        The elite will put up who they want when they want, and no longer bother to pretend anything about it, aside some perfunctory window dressing of kayfabe.

        And the Palin tea partiers will find themselves in the dumpster right next to the evangelicals. Who will both dust themselves off, lower their expectations a bit more, learn the new slogan and enemy du jour, and keep voting GOP until the GOP stops holding elections.

  2. jackiebass

    Where I live in the Southern Tier of NY which is strongly republican there are many Bush supporters. They seem to have forgotten what it was like under a Bush administration. I remind them but they just shrug it off. This is why our country is so screwed up. Too many voters just don’t have a clue about what is in their best interest.

    1. bmeisen

      substantial numbers of voters are probably poorly informed. they play i argue a subordinate role in american plutocracy. more importantly the dems and the gop control who gets to vote. the dominant parties use this power to win elections. gerrymandering is more and more relevant but i argue that selective voter registration remains the key to two-party hegemony and to the persistance of electoral results that do not reflect the interests of the “electorate”.

      in his “whats the matter with kansas?” frank does not address this point sufficiently – an otherwise wonderful book. the american electorate is variously perceived as either eligible voters, registered voters, or citizens who successfully cast ballots in a given election. these groups are histoically successive, smaller subsets of the population as measured by the census. key for both parties has been been keeping the successively smaller featue broadly in place, keeping the final group of successfully cast ballots low if not progressively year for year lower, except for special populations at special moments.

      they keep it down by preventing inclusive reform, by aerosolizing and defunding gov’t services that are not security related, and by manipulating voter rolls and ballot technology. terror, or in some instances more precisely refered to as intimidation, played until recently a vital role in this regime. one of the positive developments in american democacy in the last 50 years is less johnson’s legendary civil rights reforms and more the expansion of the media and ever-presence of cameras.

      bush has a chance because the gop will tap its single-issue base (guns, immigration, abortion, military, racists, day-traders) while suppressing the ability of opponents to vote.

      inclusive reform would effectively eliminate the distinction between eligible and registered voters by coupling citizenship with registration via a centalized gov’t services office in every jurisdiction.

      1. James

        Or we could just flip a specially minted Presidential platinum coin. It would definitely save a ton of money and stress on the electorate and almost certainly be just as effective at selecting a King or Queen to rule us. Better yet, we could just sell the office off to the highest bidder and be done with it. That’s where it’s at now anyway.

        1. James

          And make the candidates where auto/bicycle racing inspired jerseys with their sponsor’s logos sublimated on them. I think that would be a nice touch for the more stylish minded among us.

        2. Brooklin Bridge

          No, flipping a coin implies chance and there is little in these performances that is left to chance. The highest bidder is closer, but it still doesn’t convey the sense of aristocratic preordained entitlement that was the function of organized Religions in the past. TPTB are really trying to float this notion of aristocracy both as advertizing gimmick and as the inevitable outcome of our meritocracy.

          1. James

            Good points! So what, a convocation of ‘political cardinals’ or some such, with all the attendant ritual and high drama? That might be a nice touch. I think you’re on the right track with the religious connotations as well. I could easily imagine HillBillary, for example, being chauffeured around in something akin to the Pope Mobile, stopping to get out on pristine red carpets (or maybe she’s prefer blue?) from time to time to let the little people kiss her gargantuan Presidential ring and sing her praises from on bended knee. I like the visuals!

          2. McMike

            More like single combat of champions.

            The ordained candidates sit in feathered finery atop white mares, while a representative schmuck from each side enters the coliseum from opposite sides and dukes it out with machetes.

            Or maybe they place a bunch of Dem voters tied up in a blue circle, and a bunch of GOP voters tied up in a red circle, and then release a lion and see which group he eats first.

    2. Brooklin Bridge

      Too many voters just don’t have a clue about what is in their best interest.

      Your point is well taken, but as you are probably aware, the American public not having a clue is on purpose, a service provided in large part by the MSM and paid for – in time and frustration trying to avoid ever more disgustingly brazen advertizements – by the people who exist in a clueless flog (not just a fog), us.

  3. Steve H.

    “What ‘That Regan Woman’ Knows” (Frank Rich)
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/opinion/18rich.html

    This is a column that just keeps on giving. Scorned woman gives legal evidence reflecting the merry-go-round of Giuliani’s presidential run: Fox promotes Rudy, who gets more contributions, which he uses to buy advertising in Murdoch organs, so Fox promotes Rudy more…

    No one expected him to become president, but there’s money to be made in the political industry, and you can win even when you lose.

  4. H.Alexander Ivey

    Maybe he’s like his father and doesn’t think he has to really commit to running a campaign. After all, he has proven himself as governor of Florida, right?

  5. Ishmael

    The largest party in the US is the Independent Party! Jeb Bush or any Bush is dead meat to Independents.

    The Republicans would get more votes running no one than running Jeb Bush.

    I thought he just announced he was not going to run after his “exploratory committee” feedback.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      Independent is a meaningless phrase in the U.S. As long as we have fond memories of INDEPENDENCE Day, the holiday not the movie, Americans will fall all over themselves to proclaim themselves independent. If we were so independent, party discipline wouldn’t be a close second to party discipline in the UK.

  6. jsn

    Buckely v Valeo and Citizens United have transformed US into the Republic of Cash. These “conflicts” are qualifications, not concerns. Abandon those obsolete humanist morals and embrace Mammon!

  7. James

    No story here at all. I can’t imagine HillBillary doesn’t have similar skeletons in her financial closet if anyone bothers to look. We Muricans have accepted the fact that all our pols are liars and thieves and are just fine with it. Besides, if we eliminated them all on that basis who would run the country? The WH janitorial staff? Take away the Wall St thievery and the American ‘conomy would be revealed as nonexistent.

  8. Jim Haygood

    An intransigent, petrified duopoly resorts to dynasties familiar brands for lack of any better ideas.

    The Clintons vs. the Bushes is a stale, putrid rerun of 1992. Ross Perot is now 84, so he probably won’t be invited back, having been disinvited last time when the game was still on.

    This time round, I am expecting to receive not only my middle class tax cuts, but also my long-delayed pony.

  9. Brooklin Bridge

    The MSM is running trailers for this American Theatrical Display as a battle between two dynasties and are betting that way of framing it is going to earn them a lot of riveted American viewers and thus a lot of advertizing money. Probably right, but there is likely a deeper reality there and that is where the difference between Mitt – who has apparently not yet made it into the club and Jeb, who was born into it, will show. Jeb’s peccadilloes, no matter how much they approach criminal acts, will be washed away like those of his brother, by the latest form of the elite douch, that is the MSM, whereas Mitt, who is not part of the club, was treated more as a commoner – fodder to maintain the now utterly exhausted illusion that the main stream media actually reports news. That still won’t be enough for Jeb to win it however, but it will provide some interesting information about how the system actually works for different players.

    It’s hard to believe this election is not fully choreographed from start to finish. My bet is that the PTB feel it will work well to offset a stacked Republican legislative branch with a fully compliant Democrat who, along with her whole party, has gone so far over enemy lines as to be beyond even the descriptive term Vichy Democrat. And to boot they will provide America with a thriller soap, the coronation of an American female aristocrat.

    1. Brooklin Bridge

      Also TPTB ARE trying to move the country towards acceptance of dynasties and inherited power.

    2. James

      The MSM is running trailers for this American Theatrical Display as a battle between two dynasties and are betting that way of framing it is going to earn them a lot of riveted American viewers and thus a lot of advertizing money.

      Now you’re getting into the spirit of things! See now, politics can be good wholesome fun for the entire family!

  10. Jim in SC

    One of LBJ’s backers wanted to give him an oil well. LBJ wouldn’t take it, because he feared being too closely associated with Texas oil money.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      LBJ was intelligent. Hillary still doesn’t grasp her support of the Iraq War is why she isn’t President today instead of the current misfit. If Obama held a few token trials for Wall Street losers, the Obots would be presenting designs for his memorial to replace the green on the national mall.

  11. art guerrilla

    1. Don’t run Forrest, don’t run ! ! ! (Forrest, not Forest).
    2. jebba the bush is NOT a forrest gump by any stretch, he is pure eee-vil AND smart…
    3. the bush family corruption and ill-gotten gains are so institutionalized as to be practically admirable…
    4. google bush and nigerian water pumps for some old corruption they were never held to account for…

  12. Zappa from the grave

    The Bushes are a special case. Their family business is the CIA. Poppy worked in proprietaries. Jeb is working in proprietaries. Aviation? http://www.madcowprod.com/ Of course. And private equity with its notorious lack of transparency is just the latest incarnation of the slush fund that Quasha used to run. Barclays took over when BCCI ran itself into the ground. Illicit finance and air logistics are still CIA’s core competence. http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/12/12/cia-funding-never-constrained-congressional-budget/

    And ambrit put his finger on it right away. They couldn’t care less what you think. CIA has never had tighter control over all three branches of government. It’s time to make it official: CIA is the state. Any alternative to Jeb Bush will be vetted and compromised to the CIA’s satisfaction.

    1. RUKidding

      Exactly. Which is why the contest may yet be Bush v Clinton bc the Clintons have been brought into the fold, just a Obama was (and some posit that perhaps Obama was a CIA product from his inception. could be).

      Voting is a mug’s game anymore.

  13. Vatch

    I think Neil Bush is more like Forrest Gump than Jeb is. Neil was on the board of the fraudulent failed savings and loan Silverado. Despite evidence of wrongdoing, he was never indicted. Hundreds of people were prosecuted for financial crimes during the 1980s and 1990s, but not Neil. He was a precursor of things to come.

    1. barrisj

      Neil Bush, Marvin Bush, Dubya, grandfather Prescott Bush, there is a line of criminality that is embedded in this crowd that not even the Jebster can escape. But, as this is America, none of that really matters, for it is how the game is played. Up the Dynasty!

    2. James

      Despite evidence of wrongdoing, he was never indicted.

      There ya go, end of story. Everyone knows the guilty are always indicted and vice versa. That’s just how we Muricans roll!

  14. Gareth

    Why is it that when I see the words Bush, aviation and Florida in the same paragraph I think of drug smuggling?

  15. Felix_47

    Great article…..thanks. I still have a job, fortunately, although I work for the government in the defense industry (what else is there?) I am constantly amazed at how little the average worker or highly educated manager knows or cares about any of this. They watch TV…..a little…..but economics and politics just don’t seem to interest them. The election will be decided on TV based on carefully crafted spots and cosmetics and careful PR management. Bush has a lot going for him……especially his Hispanic wife…..he may well get the lions share of the Hispanic vote……which is the coming majority……The nation needs some sort of reading and current events test to screen voters………for sure. Otherwise it seems we are just blindly voting for the best TV ads and PR positioning……kind of like thinking we are getting a liberal and voting for Obama……..or Wall Street.

  16. Matthew G. Saroff

    I don’t care about his financial dealings.

    We learned all we needed to when he intervened in the Terri Schiavo matter, and pressured prosecutors to go after her husband Michael.

    He has revealed himself by creating that obscenity.

    1. RUKidding

      True enough but doesn’t matter. The “average voter” has a short attention span & could now give a sh*t about Michael Schaivo and all the rest of that heinous theater.

  17. Marianne Jones

    I didn’t even bother reading this article. I came only to say that I will never vote for another Bush or Clinton for the rest of my natural life. I don’t care if they are the only candidate, look like they are the best candidate, or can give the best speeches.

    I won’t do it. I will throw away a vote on a 3rd party candidate from the Green or Libertarian parties. I will write in candidates. I will vote for myself. If none of these options are available, I will crawl across broken glass in a bathing suit to get away from these people.

    Are these people the best that we have? Why does it not concern us more that our democratic two party system is schlepping towards presidency-by-birthright?

    1. James

      Why does it not concern us more that our democratic two party system is schlepping towards presidency-by-birthright?

      Myself, because we’re also schlepping our way to WWIII, which concerns me even more. But the Prez is mostly pomp and of no circumstance these days anyway. Look behind the curtain to see who pulls the levers we must. Although if you did, you’d probably find a drone, which would promptly kill you.

    1. steelhead23

      Maybe he read the same articles. My guess is that his advisors will now try to find all the uglies in his record and work to distance him from them, find a way to make them prettier, or, like Cosby, resolutely ignore them as beneath his stature. Today politics are more about marketing personalities than debating policy, meaning we are likely to know more about Jeb’s underwear than his views on immigration, war, banking, ……

  18. susan the other

    Jeb. He doesn’t come across as convinced he is personally a good candidate. He comes across as a person who does not want to ever be purified by social criticism. As a person who does not want to give up his advantages or continuing to take advantage of his advantages. But then he comes across as a person who doesn’t want to be judged but clearly is not necessarily some kind of a moral elite; he does not have an answer for his own nonsense, but he is fully aware of his own nonsense and has made a decision in favor of it and is just hoping the people will not crucify him. Maybe the modern definition of any reluctant politician. Who knows what he might be able to do to actually govern. My guess is nothing.

    1. James

      Good points all. But ya know, I really empathize with ol’ Jebster. He’s got it all already. Proud son of a legacy family. Dad was Prez, bro was Prez, and by all accounts he was likely to be the best of them all if he had run. Nice wife, nice kids, legacy in the bag, millions of dollars in hand, more than comfortable for as long as he draws breath. Why in the world would he want to possibly f*** things up by running for Prez?

      By that same token, makes me wonder what HillBillary is after, other than obvious comeuppance to her philandering hubby of course. Now THAT truly scares me!

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