As Jeb Bush exits the presidential race and Donald Trump marches on as the Republican frontrunner, it’s worth considering a counterfactual: Without Bush, would Trump’s candidacy have even gotten off the ground?
There’s evidence to suggest Bush’s mere existence as a presidential candidate was enough to prime the Trump engine. As Obi-wan Kenobi might have put it, Trump and Bush formed a symbiont circle—what happened to one affected the other.
The raison d’être of Donald Trump’s campaign is immigration, specifically how the country needs to stop illegal immigration, prevent more of it from happening, and punish those who have taken advantage of the lax security. He has reached and spoken to those voters in the white working class and beyond who see illegal immigrants taking away their economic security and their culture. And he has savaged those elites who have turned blind eyes to the law-breaking while preferring laws that would encourage more immigration.
There was no more perfect foil for Trump than Jeb Bush. Remember Trump’s first truly effective ad, a gonzo web video posted to his Instagram account in August 2015?
“Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony,” said Jeb Bush in a 2014 interview. “It’s an act of love.”
“LOVE?” reads the Trump ad’s bold, all-caps text. “FORGET LOVE IT’S TIME TO GET TOUGH!”
Trump’s sense of urgency fit the time and mood. An American woman had been shot and killed in the middle of San Francisco earlier that summer by an illegal immigrant who had been deported multiple times. The Democratic president had issued constitutionally questionable executive orders to achieve immigration policy goals he could not pass through a Republican-controlled Congress. And the supposedly leading GOP candidate, the one with all the establishment and donor support, was singing paeans about to illegal immigration as an act of love? It was enough to launch Trump into the stratosphere of national polls.
But it goes beyond immigration. How many memorable elements of the Trump phenomenon have a direct connection with Bush? Trump’s declaration that Bush is “low-energy.” His manhandling of Bush in the debates. His broadside attacks against Bush’s brother’s foreign policy. Even the most enduring satirical take on Trump’s presidential run is Saturday Night Live‘s portrayal of the Donald as a bully gleefully taunting “Jeborah” Bush as “basically a little girl.”
Without Bush in the race, Trump might have found another punching bag, but would it have been the same? Bush is everything Trump isn’t—quiet and introspective, genteel and self-effacing, blue-blood and a little too aware of it.
He was also the wrong Republican for the time. The party faithful may have respected the Bush dynasty, but it wasn’t interested in a restoration and too many of its voters simply weren’t that loyal to the last name or its ideas. Trump likely sensed this opening and took advantage of it. If not for Bush, Trump may have not had the opportunity to make so stark a contrast between business-as-usual and “telling it like it is.” Perhaps Trump’s flirtation with running for president this time around would have ended as his past flirtations did, without actually launching a campaign.
Instead, Trump is now two for three in primary contests and in the driver’s seat to get the Republican nomination.
