Lucy Gellman
The not-leading man makes a final stand.
Manchester, N.H. — Exactly three minutes into Jeb! My Attempt to Save My Presidential Dream, the title character warmed up to his monologue.
There had been moments of uncertainty in the beginning: a blushing, blustery rush onto the small stage, with no thought to audience interaction; a stilted introduction from Narrator-Senator Lindsey Graham; one too many nervous readjustments of his spectacles.
But now John Edward Bush — a decidedly un-dramatic policy wonk who once thought he could resuscitate his flagging Republican presidential campaign by adding an exclamation point to his first name — was making a final stand before a sympathetic audience. He’d channeled his character’s sense of distilled frustration, and he was killing it.
He leaned forward, squaring his shoulders against a large American flag, shapes dancing on the mirrored ceiling above him. Bright lights from 15 television cameras cast an almost-white glow on the stage. The temperature in the room, already warm, rose a few more degrees.
Bush rolled up the sleeves on a blue-and-white checkered shirt, smiled, and shrugged.
!
“I still remember caucus night in 2008,” he said. “I had to slap myself in the face, sayin’: ‘Man, this guy can bring a speech. No red states, no blue states, only the United States.’ It was uplifting.”
Except, he continued, until it wasn’t. According to him, that bipartisanship hadn’t happened. That candidate who spoke so passionately during his victory speech eight years ago — a marquee performer named Barack Obama — had lied, and blamed too many of his difficulties on those who had been in the White House before them.
“I don’t do that,” Bush assured the audience. “On day one, it’s my watch. It’s my responsibility. It’s my rules.”
The audience — a self-selecting adoring crowd — cheered and clapped. Bush had stuck his first landing of the night.
?
Bush’s hour-long performance Monday night opened a week-long last-ditch run for the presidency, while in Iowa his real-life campaign tanked during the evening’s caucus. Onstage, Bush knew he had to pull out the stops to fire up his audience, not just to applaud, but to show up at the polls and pull more voters to propel him back into the pack of leading Republican presidential candidates leading up to Feb. 9’s primary. That has become an increasingly distant hope as Bush’s one-time protege, Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, has emerged as the favorite of party establishment donors and voters.
Monday’s performance took place at Manchester’s Alpine Club, a members-onlyvenue known more for its spring cornhole tournaments than for experimental theater. Appearing before a crowd of close to 350, Jeb Bush — playing Jeb! Bush — delivered a compelling opening night show, sailing through one man’s plea for political sanity before wobbling, then recovering, during an audience talkback.
If you don’t get a chance to see the show, which runs in New Hampshire through Friday with an encore Saturday at the GOP debate, here’s the plot summary: Jeb is just a reasonable guy (!), whose passion for declarative punctuation is matched only by his ability to be bipartisan in a field of hard-right uncompromising Republican candidates. In the America where he lives, the country’s values — and its economy — are going to hell in a handbasket, and he’s the guy who can save it.
…
Exactly how he’ll do that, he told the audience early in the show Monday night, differentiates him from the other actors vying for that role, conjured in name only. Unlike Donald Trump, he vowed not to be a bully or to lead the country into unnecessary conflict or economic distress. Unlike Ted Cruz, he’s willing to see grey areas. And unlike Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, political characters flung and paraded around the stage like ghosts, he declared, he knows that “government can’t grow faster than we have the ability to pay for it.”
Instead, he’s planning to draw what he’s learned from serving as governor of Florida: that conservation, fiscal responsibility, and compromise are the keys to success. He’ll rebuild the military and update its archaic IT system. He’ll fight terrorism. He’ll keep social security around. And he’ll do it all before dinnertime.
For a target audience like Monday’s, the initial plot structure and succinct script totally worked. Fully in character, Bush delivered lines like “I’m willing to be the student if you’ll be the teacher” with aplomb and a strong command for the English language, if not also for its full stops. He painted his compassion, patience and willingness to compromise in vibrant color, bringing new life to phrases like “I don’t believe Democrats are my enemies. I just believe they might be wrong,” and “I don’t ascribe bad motives to people.”
Except … he does do that, all the time — and he did in full force Monday night. In a not remotely unexpected twist, Jeb turned out to be more uncompromising than promised, although far more moderate than the other political actors across the state. Like a conservative Bruce Banner, his mild manner and baby face wore off as he grew angry with the situation at hand — the country that he lives in versus the country that he envisions for himself — and began to toss those frustrations around the stage. When prompted, he vowed to push back at Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee, because politics “is not a game of bean bag.” He reminisced on his repeal of Florida’s affirmative action policies with alarming fondness. In a final soliloquy, he added that “we need to reform and disrupt” in a way that sounded dangerous, but tantalizing all the same.
Bush was wrestling with a challenging piece of theater: Trying to distinguish himself as the experienced, reasonable grown-up in a cast of frenzied Republican primary candidates, but also seeking to demonstrate passion and fire in a season when calm can prove a fatal character flaw.
As the lights fell and reality re-intruded, anemic returns trickling in from Iowa, Jeb! My Attempt to Save My Presidential Dream thrust the audience into an unsteady, unsure reality. Jeb wasn’t just behind; there was a very good chance that he’d turn out to be the tragic hero by the end of the play’s run. But he was also the best chance they had. And that made for a long, high-stakes performance.
Lucy Gellman and Thomas Breen are spending the week in New Hampshire with canvassers, campaign staffers and volunteers, and candidates. To listen to some of the voices from the Bush camp, click on or download the audio above. WNHH radio is also hosting a Soundcloud playlist of primary 2016 event and voice collages.
Thomas Breen contributed reporting to this story.
There's a subtle allusion in Bush's speech. His claim that politics "is not a game of bean bag" is a takeoff on the phrase that "politics ain't beanbag" written by the late 19th century humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dunne, like Clinton (and me) was a native of Chicago, who knew something of the realities of politics.