Jeb Bush Has Bigger Problems Than Iraq War Stumble

By Jonah Goldberg. By now everyone has had their say about Jeb Bush’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. The consensus is that Bush misheard Megyn Kelly’s “knowing what we know now” question about the Iraq war. I’m not convinced.

Politicians routinely answer the question they wish they were asked rather than the question they were actually asked. Indeed, those are the only kinds of questions some politicians — particularly ones with the last name Clinton — ever answer. The question Fox News’ Kelly asked is the tougher one, at least for Bush, so perhaps he opted to answer in a way that let him take a shot at Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also supported the war?

But it doesn’t matter. Bush should have murder-boarded every possible variant of that question. His team should have run drills on it, as if he were prepping for a presidential debate. And, he should have given a speech specifically about the Iraq war months ago to inoculate himself against all of this.

In other words, the disturbing thing about his response and the awkward effort to clean it up is that it was necessary at all.

With the possible exception of the Adamses, there’s no family in American history with more institutional knowledge about how to run for president. And of the immediate Bush clan, almost everybody agrees that Jeb is the savviest. (Read more from “Jeb Bush Has Bigger Problems Then Iraq War Stumble” HERE)
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How Wannabe King Bush III Flubbed the Iraq War Question Last Week

By Scott Wong. [GOP lawmakers] on Capitol Hill were scratching their heads as Bush struggled during four consecutive news cycles to articulate his position on the unpopular war that defined the presidency of his older brother, George W. Bush.

“[I’m] flabbergasted at the degree of back and forth that’s ensued this week on the Middle East answer, correction, non-answer, correction, etc.,” said one GOP lawmaker from a early primary state who has yet to endorse anyone in the race. . .

Jeb Bush first stepped in it [last] Monday when Fox News’ Megyn Kelly asked if he would have invaded Iraq in 2003 “knowing what we know now” — that U.S. intelligence proved to be faulty and Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Yes, he replied.

The next day, Bush took to Sean Hannity’s radio show to explain he misinterpreted the question and called it a “hypothetical” he couldn’t answer. On Day 3, Bush’s line was that such questions do a “disservice” to those who perished in the war.

By the fourth day, Bush had finally settled on a clear answer: “Knowing what we know now, I would not invade.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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