Jac VerSteeg
Jeb Bush’s many missteps last week on Iraq got me thinking about Billy Carter.
Those of us around for the Jimmy Carter presidency remember Billy. He was the “colorful” one. Or, if you were being less polite, the “dumb” one.
You could tell that Jimmy loved his brother. But you also could tell that Jimmy was embarrassed by him. Billy pulled off all kinds of cornpone antics, most infamously promoting “Billy Beer” while Jimmy still resided in the White House. However amusing Bill Beer might have been, it wasn’t a commercial success.
Billy later got into some semi-serious trouble when he accepted money from Libya in the late 1970s. Jimmy Carter wasn’t able to properly distance himself from Billy and the notion that the regime of Muammar Gaddafi was influencing U.S. policy through Billy.
Billy provided a precedent for the maxim that the “dumb” brother should stay out of foreign policy.
Which brings us to Jeb and George W.
In an astonishing failure of his handlers to prepare him for obvious questions, Jeb bungled multiple opportunities to distance himself from George W.’s Iraq policy. First Jeb said that even knowing what we know now, he would have invaded Iraq in 2003. It took him several days to work himself around to an answer 180 degrees away from that one. The voting public got there long before Jeb did.
Along the way to the answer that should have flowed easily off his tongue, Jeb dithered by blaming the “hypothetical” nature of the question, indicated he had been trying not to disrespect the war’s victims and also that he was fudging a bit out of loyalty to his brother. Jeb and his handlers surely knew that his brother’s legacy was going to be a problem. Persuading people to vote for another Bush also meant persuading them that the “new” Bush wouldn’t send America off to a war there was no reason to fight.
That job was supposed to be easy, since Jeb’s stint as Florida governor – and his overall demeanor – already seemingly had marked him as the smart one. George W. clearly was destined to be the “Billy” in that pair. Billy Carter, who died of pancreatic cancer in 1988, once had felt compelled to defend himself by declaring that he was not “a buffoon, a boob or a wacko.” It’s not much of a stretch to think that as history gets even more perspective on George W., he could be moved to make a similar statement.
But after last week and Jeb’s awful performance, it’s not so clear which brother is the smart one. Maybe Jeb is the Billy.
If so, voters (or donors) could have him back in Florida quickly, his presidential dreams dashed.
But there is one bright spot. The otherwise bollixed-up Legislature managed to pass a bill – which Gov. Rick Scott signed – allowing for the first time the sale of 64-ounce beer containers known as “growlers.”
Craft brewers will be looking for opportunities to market them.
Jeb Beer, anyone?
Jac Wilder VerSteeg is editor of Context Florida.
