I usually don't post my print columns here at HuffPo, because they tend to deal with local problems and politicians that would be of interest only to my fellow South Floridians. But the news last week that Sen. Mel Martinez will retire in 2010, and that Jeb Bush will likely run to replace him, is an item that, if nothing is done, will deeply effect all Americans. With that in mind, I felt this week's column may be a fun read for people everywhere. So, here ya go kids! Fair warning: The language is a little brusque at times, but one of the great advantages of writing for the alternative press is that, when necessary, cursing is permitted. And few topics warrant the inclusion of obscenity more than Jeb Bush.
Amid all the ado over President-elect Barack Obama's ongoing cabinet appointments, the news passed fairly quietly in the national media that Sen. Mel Martinez would not be running for re-election in 2010, citing the usual reason of a desire to spend more time with his family. The immediate announcement was eclipsed by the news, just a short while later, that former Gov. Jeb Bush was interested in running for the post. Neither of the stories came as much of a shock to me--hell, I predicted Martinez wouldn't get re-elected in 2010 on my old blog, Doomed Generation, in November 2006, and nothing about Jeb shocks me anymore. But I'm hoping that maybe Gov. Charlie Crist gets it in his ambitious little heart to hit the primaries against Jeb, because Florida does not need another minute of that swaggering, self-righteous, egomaniacal, avaricious prick.
But let me tell you how I really feel, ace. One need only look to the hagiography of recent editorials to see how the conservative movement is already circling the wagons around King Jeb. In a Dec. 5 piece, Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report wrote, "Bush, in my judgment, was the outstanding state governor of this decade. ... Operating in a state where liberal newspapers, teachers' unions and trial lawyers maintained a continual barrage of criticism, Bush and the Republican Legislature produced the nation's best education reform and major changes in healthcare, while Bush himself proved masterful in handling hurricane relief."
Clearly, Barone didn't live in Florida under Jeb's rule. The governor did everything in his power--and a great deal outside his power, if his "devious plans" comment regarding Florida's classroom-size amendment is any indication--to make education better for the wealthy while taking funds away from the neediest schools, install his "Heckuva job, Brownie"-like cronies all over both the education and hospital systems and, as far as hurricane relief, fiddle while Florida drowned. We didn't have anything as bad as what happened in New Orleans in those couple of awful hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005, but it will be difficult to forget Jeb, in the aftermath of Wilma, chiding ruined homeowners for not having enough ice in store, after days without power would have melted it, anyway. If Jeb is the "outstanding state governor of the decade," Marie Antoinette was Mother Jones.
Barone makes the same mistake high-end conservative commentators often make: If schools and healthcare are improving for the richest few, then they must be improving for all. But when Jeb left office, the state's dropout rate still ranked among the highest in the country, and his tax cuts for businesses and wealthy individuals can be blamed in part for massive budget shortfalls that saw the slashing of state budgets both in his last term and under Crist. As in his brother's America, in Jeb's Florida, things got better for a few, worse for many more.
I've quoted him in this column before, but when it comes to Jeb, I always think of the final words typed out by Wild-West-gunfighter- turned-New-York-journalist Bat Masterson. In 1921, he was found dead of a heart attack at his desk. His final words, typed out on the typewriter before him, were: "There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way."
Indeed. In Jeb's Florida, everyone got their ice. And if they got it in the winter, well, fuck 'em. They probably didn't vote for you, and they sure as hell weren't rich enough to donate to your campaign. By all accounts, Jeb is deadly serious about this senatorial run, and the Democrats have few statewide officials that could run against him. The best hope is that Charlie Crist makes a run of it and either wins the primary or so bloodies Jeb that he's easier pickings in the general for a Democrat like Representatives Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Robert Wexler or Kathy Castor, the latter of whom was the only Florida Democrat to vote against the $700 billion bailout bill, giving her some populist credence.
And then there's the only Democrat holding statewide office, state CFO Alex Sink, who may represent the Democrats' best hope of saving the Senate from the putrefying presence of Jeb Bush. Crist, Sink, whomever: Somebody has to shut Jeb down and to do so, they'll have to start early -- like, now; 2010 isn't far away. And before you accuse me of suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome or some such nonsense, know this: I suffer from Contemptible Fuckwad Derangement Syndrome. Family name has nothing to do with it.