HAMPTON, N.H. — Jeb Bush thinks Donald Trump is a jerk. He says it a lot. He even made an ad of himself saying it.
But Bush speaks to audiences every day in his quest to make up ground on the Republican front-runner, and not everyone in those audiences thinks Trump is a jerk. So Bush — campaigning at the moment here in New Hampshire, where Trump leads his closest rival by 18 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls — sometimes presents a more nuanced picture of Trump than his ads might suggest.
In a Thursday evening townhall at the Hampton Academy, the very first question after Bush finished his stump speech was about Trump. “Donald Trump has criticized you for the last six months,” a voter said to Bush. “Have his criticisms of you made you a stronger candidate, and if so, how?”
“No,” Bush quickly answered. “Donald Trump disparaging me has not made me a better candidate. Donald Trump has not provided any insights in my mind about the needs of changing — that speech I just gave, I’ve been giving for six months.”
Bush went on to say that he has learned a great deal from the voters he has encountered along the campaign trail. But Trump? No. Then Bush changed course, offering praise of Trump that came with plenty of qualifications but was praise nonetheless.
“I mean, he’s gifted,” Bush began. “I’ll say something nice about him, because I’m thinking my mom might be watching this if it’s on C-SPAN. I’ll give you two things I think are good about the guy, and then if you want me to, I can give you a list that’s a little longer on the other side of the ledger.”
I like the fact that he is politically incorrect. He goes way over the top. I hate the insulting of the disabled, of the Hispanics, of women, of POWs. All of that is just ridiculous, and it’s ugly and it divides the country more. I hate that. But I like the fact that he’s totally politically — he’s liberated. He doesn’t feel constrained by all the political correctness that exists in Washington and in politics today, because it is over the top on that side, too. So he gets credit, I think, for saying things that people would like to say but sometimes they feel like maybe they can’t.
And secondly, I like the fact that his success is something that he’s not ashamed of. He might exaggerate that, too, but the fact is, it’s OK to be successful. How are we going to create more successful people if we don’t celebrate that success? That’s important, and I think he’s made a contribution there.
Bush — whose overall townhall performance was a strong and confidently-stated mix of positions on national defense, education, the value of life, experience and, in particular, on education — went on to repeat his earlier assertion that no, Trump has not made him a stronger candidate. “As relates to learning anything about politics or about service or about the ideas I believe in,” Bush told the man, “I wish I could tell you something that might convince you, might help me get your vote or something, but no, he hasn’t really helped me in that regard.”
Thursday night wasn’t the first time Bush has offered qualified praise of Trump; his aides say Bush has done it quite regularly. (He didn’t, last week, in a townhall I attended in less Trump-friendly Grinnell, Iowa; in that appearance, Bush called Trump a jerk multiple times.) But Bush’s remarks suggest that — without changing his fundamental critique of Trump — he sees no need to gratuitously slam the front-runner with voters who are in the midst of deciding which course to take.
