By Don Jolly

Subway Conversations about Politics, Part I

It was just after ten o’clock at the Jay Street platform, and the train was late. Like everyone else, I was exhausted. I was reading a book about Adolf Hitler.

“How bad was Hitler?” asked a voice beside me.

“The worst,” I said. I was only halfway through the introduction, but felt this was probably the desired response.

“I don’t know,” said the voice. It belonged to a middle-aged black man with sleepy eyes a light blue fall jacket. He seemed bored and restless. The train still hadn’t come.

“You don’t think Hitler was that bad?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I think we should mind our own business,” he said. “Take care of our own people before we go running off someplace else.”

“No foreign entanglements,” I offer.

He nodded. We shook hands. I introduced myself. His name was Young. When the train arrived we rode it together, packed in a standing crowd.

“I went to school with Jay-Z,” he told me. “I.S 318, where he shot that video, Hard Knock Life. He ain’t have no hard knock life. His hard knock life was getting chased around by me.” Young spent a few years in the army after highschool. Now he works for the M.T.A..

In 2008 and 2012, he voted for Barack Obama. “That came back and bit me in the ass,” he says. “Voting for a Democrat.” Now he’s for Donald Trump.

“What do you like about him?” I asked.

Young looked at me as if he couldn’t tell whether or not I was kidding. It must have resembled the look I gave him when we were talking about Hitler on the platform.

The train stopped. People got off, and on.

Young shrugged. “Trump,” he said, “is tough. Not like these Democrats.”

He got off at the next station. I kept reading.

I stand by my assessment of Hitler.

A Cracker Before Dawn… The Embarrassing Destruction of Jeb Bush

The papers spoke, arrayed in broad agreement. Jeb Bush was finished (or, perhaps, still is) – and all because of a few seconds of back-and-forth with his former political pupil, Senator Marco Rubio, broadcast live from the CNBC debate stage at the Coors Event Center in Boulder, Colorado. Some samples:

“Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate was critical for Jeb Bush … it was do or die,” wrote journalist Jamelle Bouie, the chief political correspondent for Slate. ” Bush died.

Michael Barbaro, writing in the October 29th issue of the New York Times, described the confrontation like the last fight in a Rocky sequel – an action scene that effectively summarizes the character traits of those involved and repeats, in miniature, the drama which preceded it. Bush was “avuncular” and “scolding,” Barbaro said, when he pushed Rubio on his absenteeism in the Senate. Rubio, by contrast, was “unbothered” and “deft” when he accused Bush of playing politics with his remarks. “The only reason” to raise the issue, Rubio said, “is because we are running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.” It was an answer that won him “a thunderous round of applause.”

“Mr. Rubio, the upstart that the Bush inner circle never believed would enter the race … out-maneuvered Mr. Bush on live television with millions watching,” Barbaro concluded. It was a play that “echoed the exasperating pattern of the campaign for Mr. Bush, whose bulging war chest and formidable family network have added up to painfully little so far.”

About a week before the debate, on October 23rd, Reuters reported that the Bush campaign was “cutting salaries across the board and reducing staff in a money-saving effort intended to concentrate resources on early voting states.” Bush’s fundraising, as reported to the Federal Election Commission on October 15th, was disappointing. The retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson raised more money, and both Carson and Donald Trump were far more popular with small donors — an important, and potentially sustaining, source of income. Many of Jeb’s supporters, having given the maximum amount allowable by Federal law, are essentially exhausted. Small donations, however, can be solicited again and again. Since Fall began, Bush has been dispatching rafts of pleading e-mails, begging for single bills. One signed by Jeb’s son, George P. Bush, is particularly debasing.

“I’ll keep this short, Friend,” it began. “You still haven’t entered to win a free trip to Houston to meet: My grandparents, President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush [and] my uncle, President George W. Bush.” To enter the contest, you only had to “chip in $1.”

Jeb and his wife were going to be in Houston, too. In the mailer, however, George P. described them as “my parents,” leaving Bush supporters to fill in that detail – and thus ensuring that only the diehards who know the generations of the Bush clan will receive it. At the end of the message, and after a flashy image advertising George W., George H.W. and Barbara, the mailer repeated its pitch: “You don’t want to miss out on meeting my grandparents, President George H.W. and Barbara Bush; my uncle, President George W. Bush[…]” I imagine George P., the current Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office pausing significantly here and then, saying, at last: “and my dad, Jeb.”

On Saturday, October 24th, Donald Trump mocked his opponent’s woes at a rally in Jacksonville, Florida. “Bush has no money, he’s meeting today with mommy and daddy,” he said. “He’s a guy wants to run our country and he can’t even run his own campaign… I put up less money than everyone else, and I’m number one.” Trump hosted Saturday Night Live last week – a job which pays about five grand.

Jeb Bush has been accused of leaning on his name before – most notably in 1994, when he was running for Governor of Florida. According to an Associated Press report published on the 2nd of November that year, “Bush often…sought help from his celebrity parents” during his campaign, especially as an aid to fundraising. “Jeb Bush’s parents raised a million dollars each time they’ve toured with him, charming crowds with White House anecdotes and gushing praise for their son,” the A.P.reported. His opponent, the incumbent Democrat Lawton Chiles, thought this was a fact too good to pass up. “[Chiles] has ridiculed the younger Bush for getting help from ‘momma and daddy,’” the story continued.

An accomplished Southern democrat with an excess of charm, Lawton Chiles could get away with saying “momma.” When he debated Jeb Bush, on November 1^st, 1994, his performance was easy, smiling and genuine. Bush, as now, put his money on “avuncular.”

Bush’s opening statement made him sound like an aggrieved class president. “I believe there’s never been a clearer choice for Floridians as this race for governor,” he said. “On matter of crime, taxes, regulation, spending, welfare and education we’ve tried it the old way for a long, long time — and it doesn’t work.” Bush, in a classical political maneuver, promised “change.” He also, as in 2015, made efforts to present himself as the adult in the room, too serious a candidate for petty name-calling.

“If governor Chiles has come here to discuss public policy, as I hope he has, rather than personal attacks and the things that he’s done over the last month of this campaign,” Bush began, ignoring a chorus of boos, “then the voters of this state will have more information to be able to make their choice.”

Chiles, Bush implied, was an old liberal — out of touch and ineffective. To that, Chiles concocted the ultimate retort.

“I wanna call attention to this old liberal liar [thing,]” Chiles said. “Y’know, that goes on and on and on and on. My mama told me ‘sticks and stones may break my bones — but names will never hurt me!’” Thunderous applause.

He continued, leaning conspiratorially against his podium. “But lemme tell you, one other thing about the old liberal: the old he-coon walks just before the light a’ day!”

More applause. Bush looked around the room, seemingly in disbelief. He lost the election. Chiles spent part of his inauguration day in a coonskin cap. When he died, on December 12^th 1998, the House Judiciary Committee rushing towards the impeachment of the first President Clinton paused in its task to observe a moment of silence at the suggestion of Robert Wexler, a representative from Boca Raton. “Gov. Lawton was, I think, in most Floridians’ eyes […] a throwback to the age when partisanship didn’t play the role it plays,” said Wexler. And he “embodied what’s good about America.”

The St. Petersburg Times was more direct. “Florida will never see another He-Coon,” wrote Lucy Morgan, the paper’s Tallahassee Bureau Chief, in a story published on December 13^th.

The “He-Coon” line had wormed its way into political lore by the end of the decade, but, its exact meaning remains obscure. Most seem agreed that Chiles meant to convey that he, like the He-Coon, was crafty – an early riser who hunted the best meat while his competitors were sleeping. But the specific meaning of the line is less important than its sheer, brilliant, creeping strangeness… Like the He-Coon itself, the line seemed to run in from the woodland – a flash of sudden nature, unexpected and untamed. The sheer inexplicability of the line made it irresistible for the press. Chiles’ victory was narrow, and his approval rating when the race began was low enough for some in the Democratic establishment to consider him a liability. As the years pressed on the details of the race – advertisements and direct mail and get-out-the-vote efforts – withered, swallowed by the hungry symbol of the He-Coon. A somewhat illegible phrase became, at last, legible – a sign of Chiles’ skill, and a reverent tribute to the only four seconds of poetic language in the whole Florida gubernatorial race. Then, as now, the Bush name carried a certain cachet. Its rupture and Jeb’s defeat make more sense if his opponent is lauded for being strategically nonsensical. It’s no coincidence that Chiles was eulogized as a He-Coon – to read some accounts of the race, it was the animal, not him, that won the governorship in 1994.

Jeb hasn’t pulled out of the race, this year. He’s also held onto most of his base of monetary support – although Paul Singer, an influential Republican donor, did endorse Marco Rubio before the end of October. Jeb Bush “relaunched” his campaign on November 2^nd, promising to combat the “new age of cynicism.” The next day, Donald Trump (who is still, to our collective dismay, driving the media narrative of the race) celebrated the release of his new book, Crippled America.

As of this writing, he continues to thrash Bush in the polls.

The Trump phenomenon is being propelled by a number of variables, I think – primarily a rising tide of white male despair and the growing importance of elements of an Internet culture concerned mainly with dismantling any culture perceived as “mainstream.” This combination of factors may actually win votes, or it might not. Either way, a He-Coon moment is in the offing. Such is the fate of political rumblings which challenge the expertise of experts and the expectations of expectant dynasties. Rational explanations never live long, when contested with the ineffability of God – or the inscrutability of raccoons.

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