Elephant Talk
If you concluded that would-be Republican gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Bush’s answers to a Bangor Daily News interviewer’s questions in April had been generated by a particularly erratic artificial-intelligence program, you’re wrong. AI isn’t to blame. Bush’s extended demonstration of incoherence is almost certainly the result of heredity.
This Bush, who lives in Cape Elizabeth in a $7.6 million mansion he bought from convicted child-porn fan Eliot Cutler, is the nephew of former President George H.W. Bush (“I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them”) and the cousin of former President George W. Bush (“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”).
You can spot the relationships leaking through the incomprehension.
Here’s Jonathan on improving Maine’s economy: “If we go after people’s benefits with our Cartier chainsaw, I think that Mainers will be grossed out in both parties. But I think if we focus on active shooting of the foot first, we can get some lift.”
He done the family proud.
Bush’s views on the federal Environmental Protection Act start off seeming to indicate it’s strangling future development. But then he calls it “some sort of proximate problem,” and concludes, “Inadvertently over time, people need to stay and grow there and it takes on a life of itself.”
On Trump: “This guy shifted the Overton window over real issues that we all knew about and wouldn’t talk about. So I don’t know if you need to be borderline narcissistic or unstable to be able to either fearlessly or insanely shift the Overton window as well as he has.”
On unifying the state … or something: “With all systems over time, all economies, all markets, there’s a concentration over time, which gave us the Romanovs in the first place. People are chucking spears at each other. Then once this guy had 50 spear chuckers, the guy with 35 was, like, screw it, I’m joining him. And now he’s got 85 spear chuckers.”
Jonathan Bush has a website on which he promises to solve every problem facing Maine through “a collaborative effort” with assorted experts. I assume translators will be provided.
In conclusion, “I’ve always found that the best way to be a Bush is to have nothing in common with any of the other Bushes.”
Jonathan, you’re experiencing a major system failure.
Not all the GOP gubernatorial candidates suffer from the same level of signal-to-noise imbalance. At least one of them has learned the Trumpian trick of spicing up his campaign blather with snappy phrasing filled with the ill-tempered and illegal, but somehow illogically appealing.
Bobby Charles of Leeds is a former assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs under the second Bush, but was apparently inoculated against the rhetorical virus that infects that family. At a May forum in Old Orchard Beach for Republican goob hopefuls, he promised to “wire brush” undocumented immigrants from the state through the power of his executive orders, of which he pledged to issue a big stack.
The rest of his agenda? “Then we’re going to cut the income tax, and we’re going to cut the property tax, and we’re going to rebuild our schools, and that’s it.” He doesn’t mention doing anything about health care or decaying roadways, but after all those tax cuts, there won’t be any money for that stuff, anyway.
Oh yeah, crime: “Within 24 months, I can get organized crime out of this state. Within 24 months, I can shut down most of the fentanyl coming into this state.”
There are a few other GOP candidates mumbling around on the fringes, starting with state Rep. Laurel Libby of Auburn, famed for being censured by the Legislature for posting photos online of a transgendered high school girl athlete. If Libby decides to run in this Tower of Babel of a Republican primary, she might well be the favorite for the nomination. James Libby (no relation) is a Standish state senator and an unsuccessful congressional candidate. Robert Wessels is a former Paris selectman. Steven Sheppard of Bangor doesn’t appear to have any political experience. And Ken Capron of Portland has run for nearly every office without ever having garnered many more votes than there are words in this column.
As for their ability to speak in intelligible sentences, Laurel Libby was banned from legislative debate. James Libby may have once said something interesting, but if so, I missed it. Wessels, Sheppard and Capron will almost certainly be universally ignored, so it hardly matters.
Then there’s Rick Bennett, state senator from Oxford, former chairman of the state Republican Party, and unsuccessful congressional and senatorial candidate, who’s now an independent because he said stuff that’s unacceptable in a GOP primary (trans people aren’t so bad, abortion is OK, immigrants aren’t necessarily evil). There might be some lost language in which his tepid liberalism spells something like “winner.”
Talk good to I by e-mailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.
