This sounds eerily like some of the North Korean-style Dear Leader fan fiction Elisabeth Bumiller used to write about W in the Times (via):
As governor of Florida, Jeb Bush flew in Ivy League social scientists for daylong seminars with his staff and carved out time for immersive brainstorming sessions he called “think weeks.”
A voracious reader, he maintains a queue of 25 volumes on his Kindle (George Gilder’s “Knowledge and Power” among them, he said) and routinely sends fan mail to his favorite authors.
A self-described nerd, he is known to travel with policy journals and send all-hours inquiries to think tanks. (A sample Bush question: What are the top five ways to achieve 4 percent economic growth?)
I hate to dig too deep into how Jeb chose what books to tell the NYT stenographer he was reading — lest I sound like that Slate article on Hillary Clinton’s iPod — but it includes “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and some book by Bill O’Reilly.
I don’t believe that our Galtian overlords will succeed in installing Bush III but it appears that the aspens are turning.
RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual
Both previous Bushes put the economy into recession. Why would Jeb be any different?
smintheus
Priceless snark.
The Dangerman
Legalize hookers and blow?
ETA: I assume this Bush ball washing means Christie is toast?
Villago Delenda Est
If he’s reading George Glider, it helps explain why he’s fucked in the haid, for sure.
David Koch
Some of you old bloggers may remember a liberal site called “Media Whores.com”. It was a media criticism site.
Well, every year they would hold a month long poll for Media Whore of the Year (ie biggest republican courtesan). Russert would perennially finish first or second. But back during the 2004 campaign Bumiller’s Bush-lovin propaganda at even the liberal New York Times was so sickening, about 90% readers voted her biggest courtesan of the election cycle.
Zandar
Whatever the “compassionate conservative” version of slavery is, obvs.
Rent-to-own humanity, or something.
smintheus
From the Times puff piece:
So Rove thinks the GOP is pining for a Republican Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton/Barack Obama?
Villago Delenda Est
@smintheus: Without the melanin surplus, or actual following of the teachings of Jesus, or any of that hippie stuff, of course.
liberal
@smintheus: Jesus, do I hate that “new ideas” crap.
Sly
It was Plato, after all, who wrote that the pinnacle of human inquiry was the listicle. He made his case very clear in “The Top Five Ways to Escape the Cave of Ignorance.”
BubbaDave
@smintheus:
No, you missed the bit about “manager who eagerly burrows into the bureaucratic details.” Unlike the near sherif who’s too shiftless and lazy to properly oversee complex matters like BENGHAZI!!11! and the VA.
trollhattan
Speaking of our overlords, when did ALEC set up shop in Australia?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-25/pork-industry-tougher-penalties-animal-activists-illegal-filming/5474958
Anoniminous
Looking more and more like Jeb is going to be the candidate of the Corporate Wing of the GOP.
Popcorn. I need some.
karensky
My esteemed friend, Caroline, has 38 PAGES of books on her KIndle, NYT. So why don’t you write about her, you Bush starfuckers?
Baud
@smintheus:
Like tax cuts! And deregulation!
Not Adding Much to the Community
@Sly: ““The Top Five Ways to Escape the Cave of Ignorance.”” And ‘Philosopher Kings Hate This One Weird Trick.”
Hunter Gathers
The 2 year prologue to ‘Bush V. Clinton II – No, We’re Not Shitting You, Honest’ is getting real tedious. I’m already fucking bored by it all.
Schlemizel
I lived in Fl when this assclown first ran for gov & got taken apart by a very sly good old boy. All my Republican friends told me Jeb was the stupid Bush, his brothers were all smarter. I believe them.
Roger Moore
The list looks pretty shallow to me. It’s the kind of stuff intended to make people think they’re reading something difficult and intellectually challenging while confirming their existing biases. Of course that’s the kind of thing you’d include in your list if you were trying to impress other shallow people, so it shouldn’t be too surprising.
MattF
A book by Bill O’Reilly. Ha ha. I’m guessing it’s not the one about how tides work.
Roger Moore
@smintheus:
Because who wants to bother looking up JEB!’s record when they can just listen to what Rove has to say?
Baud
@Hunter Gathers:
I’m tired of the Hillary posts. But it’s never too soon to mock the MSM’s coverage of Republicans.
HoneyBearKelly
Bumiller should stick to reporting favorite ice cream flavors of presidential candidates.
David Koch
Man, the Galtian overlords sure lack nerve, these days. They turn tail and run just because Crisppy closed down the busiest bridge in the world, diverted emergency relief funds, and got caught running a real estate extortion ring.
Roger Moore
@Hunter Gathers:
FTFY.
FlipYrWhig
@smintheus: Sounds like Newt Gingrich 2.0. Jeb: Another stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.
smintheus
@liberal: Ooh, ooh (raises hand), I’ve got a new idea!! Let’s switch over to a selling-sea-shells economy. And we can diversify it up with a secondary writing-listicles-for-investment-bankers economy. We’ll be the envy of Yurp and China by ‘n’ by.
Anoniminous
Given the GOP base of ignorant-and-proud-of-it mouth breathing troglodytes I question the market savvy of branding JEB! as an “intellectual.”
David Koch
it’s the political version of “7 minute abs”
Hunter Gathers
@Baud: It feels like like I’m watching Ethnic Mismatch Comedy #644. I can see every joke coming from 2000 miles away.
MattF
@Anoniminous: Well, Jeb! has to distinguish himself from that other Bush.
PIGL
@trollhattan: I’d imagine about 30 seconds after the Koch-Murdoch global conspiracy decided it would be profitable to finance such. Those three men and their less-visible partners need to fucking disappear. Any government with balls enough to have them assassinated would be doing the world a big favor. Sadly, King-slayers seem to exist only in fiction.
PIGL
@trollhattan: I’d imagine about 30 seconds after the Koch-Murdoch global conspiracy decided it would be profitable to finance such. Those three men and their less-visible partners need to fucking disappear. Any government with balls enough to have them assassinated would be doing the world a big favor. Sadly, King-slayers seem to exist only in fiction.
piratedan
and so Ms Bumiller, just how salty were Jeb’s balls?
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
That’s because you don’t understand the underlying cause of their worldview. They hate intellectuals when and because the intellectuals look down their noses at them and prove their ideas wrong. They absolutely love “intellectuals” who agree with them because it gives their ideas a patina of respectability.
elmo
Since the most recent proven way to do it is to elect a Clinton, I doubt this is the inquiry he wants to put front-and-center going into 2016.
JoyceH
Um… 25 volumes queued on the Kindle does not a ‘voracious reader’ make. Geez, I can pick up that much in a week just watching the BookBub ads.
the Conster
@piratedan:
eeeeewwwwwwwww
Anoniminous
@MattF: @Roger Moore:
I have been schooled.
Baud
@Hunter Gathers:
I don’t know where you go for new stuff. I think they stopped making it after the Renaissance.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
This. You measure how much somebody is reading by how quickly they move through their list of unread books, not by how big a backlog they have. A long backlog may just be a sign that you aren’t clearing your reading list very quickly.
trollhattan
@PIGL:
I’m hearted by the comments, which treat the proposal with the distain it deserves. Maybe “corporations are people” has a tougher road there than it does here.
R. Porrofatto
it appears that the aspens are turning
And the tire swings are being hung on the branches.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The son of a president who could only charitably be included in the Simpsons’ homage to the Mediocre Presidents, the brother of the worst president in history, so the Village figures, “Maybe he’s the one who won’t suck!”
As a non-Floridian, the only thing I know about Jebbie’s tenure as governor was his blunderbussing himself into the Schiavo mess. Allowing that pols should be judged by their own ideals, especially since we’re talking about a primary does he have any accomplishments that should make him a first tier candidate?
Amir Khalid
“Jeb would make a real smart President. Just look at his bookshelf.”
Eye-roll.
Frankensteinbeck
Elect Democrats.
Elect Democrats.
Elect Democrats.
Elect Democrats.
Elect Democrats.
Well, that was easy. I didn’t even need flashcards.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@piratedan: Bumiller was a point of comparison, this puff piece was written by Michael Barbaro, Times embed with the Romney campaign, and…
trollhattan
@trollhattan:
Uh, “heartened.” Edit function no work on Android tablet.
David Koch
You know who else read a lot of books
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Amir Khalid:
OT: Thanks for making me aware of Sharukh Khan. I just watched “Chennai Express” and it was a paragon of Bollywood goodness. Raised my spirits at time when they’re pretty low.
piratedan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: my bad Jim, ty for the correction
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@piratedan: I just clicked on his bio because his name seemed familiar, but I saw nothing there that rang a bell. the bit about interviewing willard’s coiffeuse just made me chuckle
liberal
@Frankensteinbeck: not going to get us there if they keep pushing “free trade” agreements.
PIGL
@trollhattan: I understood you all the same. It took 30yrs for that kind of discourse to dominate Canada entirely. You have to nip it in the bud, like a dose of the clap, or an invasive species of wasps.
Higgs Boson's Mate
So Jeb! reads books. Bully for him. I can read a book on advanced theories in quantum mechanics, understand and correctly pronounce every individual word, yet not know any more about quantum mechanics than I did when I started. Reading is not comprehension, a quality that seems to be nonexistent in the Bush family.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I would especially recommend against electing a President named Bush, which will guarantee the lowest growth since the end of WWII.
Roger Moore
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Jeb! reads books that tell him what he wants to hear. He isn’t reading anything that might possibly challenge his preconceptions. To me, that’s the big takeaway.
MikeN
I remember those happy days as a philosophy undergrad, reading the “PowerPoint Presentations of Plato”.
aimai
@JoyceH: Yes.My father and I share a kindle account. I think it has 147 books on it. Does Jeb realize that he can have more than 25 books on it? Especially if he’s not planning to read any of them? It just costs money.
Mike G
Great, he’s using the ‘Newt Gingrich without the obesity’ schtick, the stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person thinks and says, full of shallow corporatist buzzwords.
aimai
@Not Adding Much to the Community: Perfect.
aimai
@Mike G: Also the idea that you can buttonhole random people to figure out what to do economically for the whole country seems just weird and childish. Its crafted as a kind of kingly myth for the little people–“he’s always thinking of you peasants and your needs!” The Tsar never stops thinking of how to improve your pathetic lives!
Nothing in Jeb!’s life indicates the faintest interest in real public service. He’s in on the family grift, is all.
Schlemizel
@David Koch:
I figured for sure that link would go to the Rove planted story about what a great reader Boy Blunder was.
Everyone else remember that hilarious PR move?
mai naem
I remember reading a piece when Schwarzenegger was elected governator, that he was using a lot of Jebbie’s consultants/cronies/pals to privatize California like he had done with Florida. The piece made Florida sound like a pay to play state.
Also too, 60+ year old Jebbie’s wealth upon leaving office was only $1.5M which sounds really little for a Bush which also makes me wonder if the elder Bushes are doing some offshore tax evasion. Hell, I’m guessing Jenna Bush is worth more that $1.5M. I’m assuming that Babs and George H.W.(both being from old money) are trust fund babies who would have to start passing on the money kind of early.
Just Some Fuckhead
I was wondering what angle they’d take to differentiate him from his stupid brother.
Mike G
“Not quite as stupid as my stupid brother” is considered a massive achievement by the Special Olympics performance standards of the Bush family. They were born to rule, and will only tolerate the barest wisp of Potemkin accountability to you lowly peasants.
Alex Bollinger
“What are the top five ways to achieve 4 percent economic growth?”
I know that question is supposed to make Bush III sound smart, but it’s actually a really dumb question. We don’t know how to achieve growth in ways that aren’t “have low growth for a while, then high growth will follow eventually” and “sometimes you can make that eventually happen sooner.”
Either way, if he really is reading policy journals, he’s sure to have read many studies on things that are correlated with growth so he’d probably be able to formulate a deeper question….
Oh and maintaining a queue of 25 books is easy. Reading those books is the hard part.
gratuitous
@Schlemizel: You and me both. I remember all those gettin’-on-Air-Force-One-lugging-some-tome shot of the The Dim Son, everyone pretending that Bush was actually going to use some book as anything other than a doorstop or a hazard on the putting green.
But for some reason, those halcyon days have been long forgotten by our popular media folks. Now they just want to kvetch about what an “easy ride” Obama has had.
Amir Khalid
@mai naem:
Well, there’s the fortune that’s in your name, your walking-around money so to speak, and the one that you have the benefit of, which among the very rich are carefully kept well out of the taxman’s reach by accountants and lawyers. The latter might not be in Jeb’s name, and might not be for him alone, but it’s there.
Josie
It’s sort of difficult to equate someone who reads Gilder and O’Reilly with this description. Am I missing something here?
Mike G
It’s the kind of stupid, shallow question you hear often from MBA types in the corporate world. “Gimme a list of ways to boost quarterly earnings (and I don’t give a crap if it destroys the company in five years cuz I’ll be rich and retired by then)”
Hurling Dervish
@Schlemizel: I read three Shakespeares!
Kyle
@gratuitous:
I remember this transparent crap so well. He reminded me of the spokesmodels on The Price Is Right, waving their arms around whatever piece of junk appliance they were told to promote this week with no idea what it was.
Higgs Boson's Mate
The economy grew 37% during the 1950s. The top marginal tax rate during the 1950s was 91%.
Villago Delenda Est
If Jeb! wants some ideas about economic growth, he should read The Wealth of Nations, the most unread book on the planet. OK, tied with the New Testament for that honor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hurling Dervish: I remember in the summer of ’01 when the Shrub blocked stem cell research, and Karen Hughes down at the Standing Photo Op Ranch holding up great big thick books and insisting the President had actually read these big books! He really did!
SFAW
1) Help all the Galtians relocate to their new, regulation-free Paradise in Somalia
2) Try McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, and a bunch of others on charges of sedition and/or treason. (The rest will fall in line.)
3) Try Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and a few others of their ilk, on charges of treason. “Explain” to their replacements that banks are there to serve the populace and country, not the other way around.
4) Develop an honest-to-FSM, no-shit, Industrial Policy, the sole purpose of which is to restore vertical manufacturing in this country. Ensure that a large part of that policy involves making the Giants of Industry pay a HEFTY price for off-shoring production. Have the government fund AT LEAST $500 Billion of the re-tooling, paid for, in part, with 50 percent marginal rate on income (both earned and unearned) over $2 Million. This will be accomplished if Item #2 is executed properly, first.
5) PROFIT! (or Benghazi!!!!1!2!, I don’t remember which)
Yes, I realize there are a ton of details to work out.
No, I’m not kidding.
ETA: For Dimon, Blankfein, et al., “economic terrorism” might work as well as the other alternative.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
You DO realize that the name “Adam Smith,” translated into German, is “Karl Marx,” right?
Goddamn bocialist!
Hurling Dervish
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I remember when I first realized what the stem cell “dilemma” was about – you mean, these are in vitro cells that a couple doesn’t need, so they’re going to throw them away, or else use them for research??? That’s the freaking “controversy”?
Yet the Bush people were pumping it as an example of his Solomon-like intellect, delving deep into the medical ethics of this hard, hard problem.
If only he had spent the time reading CIA memos instead.
SFAW
@Hurling Dervish:
They were in his 25-volume pre-Kindle queue.
Unfortunately, the volumes ahead of those memos in the queue were tougher going than he originally thought. “Dick and Jane” was especially vexing, and he needed to get the Cliff’s Notes version of “See Spot Run.”
Hurling Dervish
@SFAW: It took him till September to get to “My Pet Goat.”
SFAW
@Hurling Dervish:
Well, that one wasn’t in the queue: he did that as a special, to try to impress the upperclassmen where he was reading it.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike G: Hey, that’s my bit.
Warren Terra
I’m the last person to criticize anyone for accumulating books and then not reading them, but doing so doesn’t educate you in the slightest. You’d think this ninny could figure that out. Unless of course Amazon has figured out how to beam knowledge from the Kindle to your brain, in which case I need either to get one or to run screaming from them, I’m not sure which.
Also, that question is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Does he really think there is some safe, sensible, feasible way to get 4% growth, and the think tanks are just sitting on it, wondering why no-one ever asks for such an idea?
catclub
@Zandar: “Whatever the “compassionate conservative” version of slavery is, obvs.”
Been reading about the labor situation at immigration detention centers, lately? (LGM)
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike G:
This is very shallow of me — and I’m a fine one to talk anyhow, given that I am a bit jowly and tummyish myself — but all the pictures I’ve seen recently of Jeb!, he does look a bit … um … floofy.
Yeah, floofy, that’s it.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
And he got interrupted in the middle of “The Pet Goat”.
Betty Cracker
@Schlemizel: “The old he-coon walks just before the light of day.” — Lawton Chiles
Chris
@Mike G:
Newt Gingrich is, to date, the man that I think best embodies the phrase “a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.”
I am not surprised that Jeb would try to follow in his footsteps.
mai naem
I give the average American voter very little credit for being smart but,jeebus, seriously, if Americans vote a Bush in 2016, there is something in the water of American voters that has caused some brain damage. And I ain’t talking Karl Rove’s version of brain damage. I guess there’s a minuscule chance that the Dems have a Anthony Weiner/Zell Miller ticket and lose against a Bush/Walker ticket but really a Bush so soon after Dubbya…..
jc
I don’t care how many books are on his Kindle, his whole family are a bunch of treasonous bastards and his environmental record as governor is absolutely appalling.
Ken
@Frankensteinbeck: I was going to say “Start with 7% growth and elect a Republican,” but your answer is better.
Joey Maloney
@David Koch: I still miss the Horse.
Steeplejack
@Sly:
LOL.
Avedon
I’d like to believe that Jeb Bush would actually read, enjoy, and understand a beautiful book like Their Eyes Were Watching God, but I just don’t.
rapier
Bush is the perfect choice for president. That is someone who is supremely comfortable with all the institutional elites; corporate, financial, military,intelligence/security and not only that but is already on a first name basis with many of their leaders.
Obama is simply deferential to all entrenched institutional power but will never be at home with them. Unlike Bush whose father envisioned and played no small part in making Washington the Imperial Capital where all powerful institutional interests came to stake their claims and settle their differences.
richard
Reading the NYT can be a double-bind:
SFAW
@mai naem:
I know you’re not kidding, but I can’t believe you’re serious. After all the imbeciles voted into office in the last 15-plus years? After Bush v Gore was even close? With Rethugs controlling the House (never mind the gerrymandering) and (in effect) controlling the Senate? With the wholehearted rejection of science by approximately half of the country? Where more people believe in angels and divine miracles than in Evolution? (OK, I’m not sure about the actual numbers, but I’m on a roll here.) Where Wayne LaPierre is still walking free, and not brought up on terrorism charges? Where any member of the 2012 Rethug Klown Kar Parade had a chance to win the White House?
In WHAT rational version of the Universe would something like this even be possible?
So, Jeb! has a very real chance of winning. They started pumping W in 1998, and even though rational persons knew him to be a joke, and knew Al Gore to be a somewhat stronger candidate than Hillary will likely ever be, we still ended up with the Bush Disaster. Plus, I don’t recall – although I might be having a case of selective memory – the media circus savaging Gore the way they’ll go after Hillary … which has already started, and will continue until she drops out or Roger Ailes runs out of spending cash.
I can’t tell you how much I hope that I’m wrong, but history indicates otherwise. And Mencken’s “law” continues to apply.
Elizabelle
Great blogpost title, DougJ. Still laughing at it.
@SFAW:
I dunno. Gore actually served in the military, but he can be kind of wooden.
He is so GODDAMN right about climate change, though, and actually is an ideas person.
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
And he wore “earth tones,” can you believe it? And would you really want to have a beer with him?
Irrelevant. It’s the beer thing that’s most important. Or that he not be uppity. Or Benghazi!! or something.
nic
Of course we’re only in the sounding out phase, but: ‘you see I’m the Bush that should have been picked’, is not an especially inspirering campaign message.
lumpkin
>>>(A sample Bush question: What are the top five ways to achieve 4 percent economic growth?)<<<
A sample Bush or any other generic GOP answer:
1. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
2. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
3. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
4. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
5. Eliminate regulations and cut taxes
….et in infinitum….
lumpkin
>>>(A sample Bush question: What are the top five ways to achieve 4 percent economic growth?)<<<
A sample Bush or any other generic GOP answer:
1. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
2. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
3. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
4. Cut taxes and eliminate regulations
5. Eliminate regulations and cut taxes
….et in infinitum….
someofparts
The idea of anyone named Bush being literate is hard to even imagine.
Epicurus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This incident needs to be “unburied” and brought up any time Jeb! decides to start measuring curtains in the Oval Office. One would think that his brother’s performance would permanently exclude anyone named “Bush” from running for any kind of office in this country, but our memories are short, as always. Let’s never forget “Dr. Bush” diagnosing Ms. Schiavo from a distance, sitting in his comfy office in Talahassee. I for one will not.
nicteis
@The Dangerman: Picketty notes that half or more of economic growth has always come from population growth – it’s the main reason why he projects historically low growth will continue through the rest of the century.
So Number One Top Way is for everybody to throw out the prophylactics and go out and ball like bunnies, and number two (if it’s specifically US growth you care about) is to throw open the borders to whomever has a yen to immigrate.