The legacy of Governor Jeb Bush by gimleteye

In its key aspect “Perfect timing” is right, as Marc Caputo and Mary Ellen Klas write in today’s Miami Herald opinion section of Jeb Bush’s two terms as governor.

Jeb Bush is indeed the beneficiary of perfect timing. In our view he is lucky to leave office with high approval ratings.

The dominant aspect of the Bush tenure was his team’s rigorous discipline and execution of media messaging. It’s the only area of his administration where Jeb Bush and his team deserve a straight ‘A’.

Caputo and Klas note this fact, virtually at the end of their piece, but it is the central fact and we would put it right at the top.

History will record that the Karl Rove playbook worked much, much better in the State of Florida than for the Bush White House. Ie. Terry Schiavo.

Bush “blended Madison Avenue marketing savvy with Pennsylvania Avenue politics.” It’s true. So true, that both Caputo and Klas (or their editor) fell right into the trap, writing, “He oversaw the successful Everglades restoration project (and) revamped the state’s growth management laws…”

Baloney! !@#%$!@$%^

Because mainstream reporters and editors have struggled to write critically about Jeb Bush, for the most part, Jeb got a free ride.

Not from the mainstream media—which he did!—but mainly from Alan Greenspan, former chief of the Federal Reserve—which he did in spades.

The salient fact, as Caputo and Klas report, is the dramatic expansion of the state’s economy during Jeb Bush’s tenure. Jeb was simply a VIP passenger on that ride. We'd put this fact in the second paragraph, not buried in the middle.

As Governor Bush’s biggest campaign supporters understand perfectly, it was the confluence of historic, low interest rates of the Federal Reserve at a time when foreign investors had no alternatives but to invest in US debt that fueled Florida’s economic expansion.

And that economic expansion gave Governor Bush lots of latitude to pursue his idiosyncratic, cockamamie course in conservatism. So give credit where it is due, to a “political hack” (Alan Greenspan) at the Federal Reserve who panicked at one self-induced bubble in the stock market and replaced it with another, in housing.

Florida has been a cheap date. But it occurs to us, that there is a better image to sum up the total of Jeb Bush's two terms--the one that Caputo and Klas use to frame their piece: Jeb Bush walking through a rental furniture store in Coral Gables, imagining he could do a better job of running the place.

Our take on the image is that Jeb was landlord of the furniture store, Florida, rented out to low-cost and exploitative industries that have had the run of the state with minimal supervision while stripping cash from underlying assets and leaving the consequences to witless shareholders. And the intangible tax is gone.

It was a neat trick, and one scarcely reported, that makes us wonder if anyone will know what happened. Which may be the point, after all, of political wizardry.