The most important lesson of terrible premature presidential-campaign speculation is that nearly everyone who engages in it will be terribly, hilariously wrong. It doesn't matter if you're a complete buffoon, like Dick Morris, author of the 2007 classic "Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race," or someone fairly serious and "savvy," like New York Times politics reporter Matt Bai, who posited current nobody Mark Warner as the future of the party in a 2006 Times magazine cover story now best (if barely) remembered for its altered and unflattering photo of the subject.

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Bush made a point of not endorsing Romney before the Florida primary, months ago, because, like many other mainstream Republicans, he was still hoping that someone better would come along. There was never any real chance that Jeb Bush was going to endorse Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul, so waiting this long really just hammers home that Bush was hoping someone else would make a strong showing. (Jeb was also that potential "someone better" for a number of Republican pundits and functionaries, but he declined to run, because it'll probably take another couple of years for Americans as a whole to forget how horrible everything gets when you elect a Bush president.) But Santorum is sort of a nut and has no shot at winning the nomination, so let's just end this horrible nightmare.

Here is the very belated and perfunctory endorsement statement:

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Current candidates include corpulent lobbyist Haley Barbour, superhumanly uninteresting former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, wingnut mascot Michele Bachmann, world's most obvious panderer and Obamacare inventor Mitt Romney, washed-up serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, and the usual assortment of fringe characters, pests and unelectable voices of reason.

Washington insiders are not thrilled with this gang:

Another, more subtle indicator of the congressional GOP’s heartburn over the looming presidential campaign can be detected in the quips about some of the prospective candidates who are soaking up media attention.

"Well, I thought everybody had rallied around [Rep.] Michele Bachmann -- that was my sense," deadpanned [Rep. David] Dreier when asked about where his fellow House Republicans stand on the presidential race.

Ha. Zing? That's going to make for an awkward chat in the cloakroom.

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Fun fact: Rove, who divorced his wife of 24 years in 2009, is now openly dating lobbyist Karen Johnson. Johnson sat on Bush's Business Council when he was governor of Texas, and worked for his transition team in 2000, which helped her lobbying business immensely. Rove and Johnson have been rumored to be having an affair for years. The former incarnation of Radar Magazine reported the rumor in 2005. In 2008 Radar claimed that Johnson's family was urging her to leave Rove and settle down with a ranch foreman named (no joke) Rhett Hard. Looks like that is no longer necessary.

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(K-Lo thinks Jeb Bush would make a fine running mate. Wouldn't he look so nice up onstage with, say, Rick Santorum? Swoon!)

Jeb says he won't run in 2012. If there is a point to all this Jeb Bush ego-stroking, it's that the GOP establishment has probably decided that Jeb will be the post-Obama nominee, and they're getting everyone acclimated to the idea. And maybe some of them would like Jeb to make a practice run for the job, like Reagan did in 1976. (Said practice run was not necessary for Jeb's brother George, but I guess they'd like to make the process look more legitimate this time around.)

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For a brief moment in the 2008 campaign, it seemed we might be on the verge of something of a post-dynastic era, with Democrats spurning Hillary Clinton in favor of a first-term senator who had been in the Illinois state Legislature just four years earlier, and with the Bush family name in disrepute thanks to George W.'s misadventures. But that was probably an illusion, something we were reminded of earlier this week, when Jeb Bush dropped yet another hint that he sees a White House run in his future.

"If I ran for office, I would be a proud younger brother of George W. Bush and a proud son of George H.W. Bush," the former Florida governor said in Nevada on Monday. As he has done before, Bush ruled out running for president next year, but left the door wide open for 2016.

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That '94 debacle, at least initially, terrified Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats into a state of paralysis. Sixteen years later, though, Barack Obama simply acknowledged the "shellacking," went back to work, and soon found himself signing the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" and extracting an unexpected $300 billion in stimulus through a compromise with Republicans. No one was seriously questioning his relevance as president, and even conservatives were willing to concede that his odds of winning reelection in 2012 were still pretty good, despite the massive midterm losses.

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Bush is set to attend a fundraiser for Paul's U.S. Senate campaign in Louisville on Monday, the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Jack Conway says Bush is helping a candidate that doesn't fully support the act, which was signed into law by Bush's father, former Republican President George H.W. Bush.

Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton said Conway is distorting Paul's position on the act. Paul said earlier this year that he doesn't want to repeal the law, but that it can create hardships for small businesses forced to install elevators.

A call to Jeb Bush's Miami office wasn't immediately returned.

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Yes, of course, that election is three years away, and it's absurdly early to be talking about it, much less polling on it. But this survey -- conducted by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm -- does have some interesting results beyond the topline.

First of all, it does appear that Obama's rebounding after a difficult summer, expanding his lead against the various potential challengers.

And then the performance of those challengers is interesting in and of itself. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee continues to be the strongest performer against Obama, with 41 percent of respondents saying they'd vote for him against 48 percent for Obama. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney does pretty well, too, with 39 percent of respondents opting for him over the same 48 percent for Obama.

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Speaking to Tucker Carlson about the current state of the Republican Party for an interview published in Esquire, Bush put his finger on the single issue that could end up crippling the GOP to come, the lack of Hispanic support and the active denigration of Hispanics by some of the louder voices on the right.

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"While the opportunity to serve my state and country during these turbulent and dynamic times is compelling, now is not the right time to return to elected office," Bush said in a statement released Tuesday. "In the coming months and years, I hope to play a constructive role in the future of the Republican Party, advocating ideas and policies that solve the pressing problems of our day. We must rebuild the Party by focusing on the common purposes and core conservative principles that unite us all -- limited government, a strong national defense and safe homeland and the protection of liberty tempered by personal responsibility."

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Bush is eyeing a run to replace Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, who announced on Tuesday that he will not seek reelection. In an e-mail sent Tuesday night, Bush told Politico, "I am considering it.” 

Obviously, the Bush name is a liability in national politics these days. But the same isn't as true in Florida, where Jeb Bush remains popular, even if his brother isn't.

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For most people, a call from the president would be honor enough. But apparently that's just not sufficient for Limbaugh's anniversary; instead, his call from George W. Bush included the president's father, George H.W. Bush, and one of his brothers, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Oh, and Vice President Dick Cheney recorded a congratulatory message too, and so did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Another person offering congratulations of a sort was Tom Tomorrow, who draws This Modern World, which appears weekly here in Salon. On his blog, he quipped:

Most of us try to make our mark, in some small way. But it's a rare group of human beings who can look themselves in the mirror and know, beyond any doubt, that the world is a far worse place for their having lived in it.

It's quite an achievement!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/08/01/limbaugh_7/feed/ 21 http://www.salon.com/2007/01/21/hillary_63/ http://www.salon.com/2007/01/21/hillary_63/#comments Sun, 21 Jan 2007 14:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion//feature/2007/01/21/hillary The exasperating coyness is over at last. Gone are the days when Hillary Clinton would robotically respond to questions about running for president by claiming, "I am not thinking about it at all."

There was no ambiguity to the video -- shot this week at her home in Washington and released Saturday morning on her Web site -- announcing the formation of an exploratory presidential campaign committee. "I'm not just starting a campaign, though, I'm beginning a conversation with you, with America," she said, sitting on her sofa in a red jacket with framed pictures of Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, visible on a side table. On the Web site, the video was headlined, "I'm In," and her fledgling campaign announced plans for her initial foray into Iowa, the site of the opening-gun 2008 caucuses, next weekend.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/01/21/hillary_63/feed/ 95 http://www.salon.com/2006/05/10/jeb_2/ http://www.salon.com/2006/05/10/jeb_2/#comments Wed, 10 May 2006 18:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2006/05/10/jeb George W. Bush said in Florida today that he'd like to see his brother Jeb make a run for the White House.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/05/10/jeb_2/feed/ 42 http://www.salon.com/2005/04/13/schiavopoll/ http://www.salon.com/2005/04/13/schiavopoll/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:54:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2005/04/13/schiavopoll If Republicans still think there's something to gain by bashing the judiciary over the Terri Schiavo case, a new post-mortem poll of Florida voters ought to give them second thoughts. The Quinnipiac University poll finds that voters disapprove of just about everyone's handling of the Schiavo case -- all except the U.S. Supreme Court's, that is.

Florida voters disapprove of George W. Bush's handling of the Schiavo case by a margin of 59-35 -- the same margin by which they disapprove of Jeb Bush's involvement. Voters disapprove of Congress' role 64-27, the Florida legislature's role 62-26, and the media's role by a whopping 71-23 percent.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2005/04/13/schiavopoll/feed/ 0 http://www.salon.com/2005/04/07/clintonbush/ http://www.salon.com/2005/04/07/clintonbush/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2005 12:13:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2005/04/07/clintonbush Clinton vs. Bush.

It has a familiar ring to it, and it's a pleasing one for Democrats who can remember all the way back to 1992. But we're not talking about Bill Clinton beating George H.W. Bush in a three-way race with Ross Perot 13 years ago. We're talking Clinton vs. Bush, head-to-head in 2008.

But which Clinton? And which Bush?

The latest Democracy Corps poll offers it up just about however you want it. Democracy Corps asked voters to pick between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush for 2008. Respondents chose Clinton, 50-47. The senator from New York "runs particularly well with young voters, women, including white women, college and unmarried women, and even holds a narrow advantage in the rural areas," Stan Greenberg and James Carville write in their analysis of the results. Hillary beats Jeb by seven points among independents. And despite all the talk about Hillary as a polarizing figure -- talk we've heard come out of our own mouths, too -- Hillary wins the support of 11 percent of Republican voters. (And it should be noted that the poll probably doesn't reflect whatever reactions voters had to Jeb Bush's role in the Terri Schiavo case. If the poll were conducted again today, we're betting that support for the Florida governor would drop at least a bit.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2005/04/07/clintonbush/feed/ 0 http://www.salon.com/2005/03/25/republicans_15/ http://www.salon.com/2005/03/25/republicans_15/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2005 21:03:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2005/03/25/republicans Are they finally figuring it out?

Republicans in Congress rushed headlong into the Terri Schiavo case based on promises -- from the inside and the outside -- that it was "a great political issue" for them that would appease their supporters on the religious right while forcing the Democrats to align themselves with death. It was supposed to be a win-win situation for the GOP, but it hasn't worked out that way. The polls show that a substantial majority of Americans oppose congressional intervention in the Schiavo case. And in just one week, George W. Bush's approval ratings have dropped seven points, to the lowest level of his entire presidency. The Republican National Committee says it's because Bush is tackling "tough issues" like Social Security and energy policy. But with Terri Schiavo dominating virtually every minute of TV news this week, it's hard to think that Social Security and energy policy are driving Americans' views of their president. It's all Terri, all the time, and the public isn't comfortable with what it's seeing.

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