Poor Jeb. For two decades, the story has been that Jeb Bush was the victim of fate and his family, kept from great power by timing and luck. He was the star, the over-achiever, while his big brother George struggled with the son-and-heir syndrome that affects many namesakes. Jeb was the brain who — as opposed to his father and brother — sometimes had problems with words. Jeb should have won his governor’s race in 1994, the tale went, after which he would have run for president in 2000, and then been a much better president than George W.
After 2008, the story was that Jeb’s future was doomed by his father and brother, whose various failings had made the Bush name toxic. But 2015 has shed some new light on these matters, suggesting this take may be wrong.
