Who is Jeb!!!

Insurance entrepreneur Andendall (Stupidparty Math v. Myth, 2014) shows a knack for political satire in this exposé of former Florida governor and current presidential candidate Jeb Bush and his antecedents.

In this follow-up to Stupidparty Math v. Myth, the author belatedly realizes that he treated President George H.W. Bush too kindly in that book. Here, he’s determined to show how that president’s son, Jeb (or, as he calls him, “Jeb!!!”), is a product of generations of stupidity, insipidity, and thinly veiled fascism. Along the way, he links a great deal of 20th- and 21st-century American economic and political history to Yale University’s top-secret Skull and Bones society. If the first book largely gave the first Bush president the benefit of the doubt, this book excoriates him, and while Andendall paints “W.” and “Jeb!!!” as, primarily, unintelligent puppets here, he portrays the first President Bush as truly evil. But he, too, is a product of his forebears, Andendall asserts, as he traces the Bush and Walker family’s alleged ties to Nazi Germany. He also points out that future U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush (Jeb’s grandfather), future CIA Director Allen Dulles, future New York Gov. W. Averell Harriman, and Jeb’s great-grandfather George Herbert Walker all ran in same pre-World War II investment and legal circles. Most books of political rhetoric are clearly biased, and there’s no doubt where Andendall’s allegiances lie in this one. Its best lesson is that voters should question everything that candidates say, rather than taking their words at face value; however, Jeb Bush’s words, as related here, are often so moronic that it strains credulity that anyone could believe them: “How you get on welfare is by not having a husband in the house—let’s be honest here....Men are not on welfare. That’s the point.” The author’s style is amusing, at times hilarious: “When I look at Poppy’s [George H.W. Bush’s] writings, one adjective just keeps popping to mind—insipid.” That said, as entertaining as Andendall’s writing style is, his arguments might have been strengthened if he’d toned it down. In truth, though, his book is not going to change the minds of any Republican supporters.

A humorous, if horrifying, history of Republican politics in the last 75 years.