The Palm Beach Post reports, "Jeb Bush is having his best legislative session ever." The St. Pete Times lead editorial: "Jeb Bush wields power without accountability." But, nothing, in the favored son's hometown newspaper, The Miami Herald.
Some mainstream newspapers are picking up the theme that has appeared regularly at Eyeonmiami: how the underlying tension of the Charlie Crist / Marco Rubio campaign to be the next US Senator is being played out through a plan for a resurgent, re-branded Bush in national GOP politics. It is transparent to any close political observer, but not reported at all in The Herald. (for more, see our archive under the tag, 'Jeb Bush')
The skirmishes over Florida GOP party leadership, the storm of criticism over party spending, over the embrace of the Obama fiscal stimulus, over acquisition of US Sugar lands planned by Crist and thwarted by Fanjuls, the effort to "sunset" the Florida Department of Community Affairs, and a controversial plan to tie teachers' compensation and performance to the Bush FCAT: these are all being set to a low boil for the Jeb Bush account.
Tim Nickens writes in the St. Pete Times, a newspaper often sharing stories with The Herald, "Less than two years ago, Bush declined Times' staff writer Sydney P. Freedberg's request for an interview by claiming he was "trying hard to stay out of the public eye to let my successor do his thing.'' Now he's more like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books. You can feel his presence in the room, his surrogates are doing the dirty work and he still finds ways to leave his own mark. And there's no Harry Potter around to match his intellect or political skills."
I'm not sure Nickens is right about Jeb's intellect. If Jeb was so right on education, for instance, why won't he take credit for Florida a state ranking "50th, as in last, in state spending on education, according to the latest study by the National Education Association. The state's production of bachelor's degrees ranks 30th, yet another year of funding cuts to education is emerging in Tallahassee" according to Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College. Padron concludes in a recent editorial in the Herald, "State at the Bottom",, that the failure of spending on education "will have devastating effects on our community." Add the FCAT to that judgement and tying teachers to a failed model of high school education, and you have the good beginnings for a report on the real Jeb Bush legacy.
Nickens, for the St. Pete Times, is right when he concludes on Bush: "It must be nice to get your way and settle old scores without having to defend your own record." So, Miami Herald, why not report that story?
5 comments:
gimleteye:
Of course you're right about Jeb's effective control over the Herald, and you can throw in Zell's papers in Broward and Orlando. But I really differ with you on the idea that Bush will ever run for political office again. Time will tell but I'll bet you he doesn't. The Republican Party is splintering, major components of its potential formula for electoral victory, the white Tea people and Hispanic voters are irreconcilable. Watch Rubio struggle to keep them together (he's got to go before one audience and be for English First and harsh immigration policies and then go into South Florida and the I-4 corridor and tell them the opposite) and watch the three way race for the US Senate that develops because of that dynamic.
And as to the idea that Jeb has an education legacy, that is simply ludicrous.
perhaps the herald also wants the name 'bush' to just go away
who wants to forget jeb with his gold-plated scepter knighting rubio the favored son of the tea-gaggers in the hollowed halls of florida
Jeb Bush is a crook.His legacy is the total destruction of Florida,He wll not be happy until Florida is completely paved over from Miami to naples.The man and his brother belong in prison.......
....and the father!
Jeb won't run because sooner or later he would have to explain how he could go to work for Lehman after he left office and why Florida lost hundreds of millions on Lehman crap that he helped to sell to Florida.
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