The campaigns of Donald Trump and Jeb Bush are hoping that everyone sees them as polar opposites. It helps both to be considered the other’s foil. Perhaps it’s because I back neither (my choice is Marco Rubio) that I can see one dangerous, common characteristic: they are both campaigning from the past. As the Canadians might say, Bush and Trump are Yesterday’s Men.
With Trump, the dependence on the past is obvious – and on purpose (“Make America great again” and so forth), but perhaps even he doesn’t realize just how deeply stuck in the 1990s he is. His commentary on the global economy is the best example: he promises to take jobs back “from China…from Japan…from Mexico.” It’s as if he hasn’t even noticed the nearly two-decade flatlining of the Japanese economy. On immigration, his entire mantra focuses on how they are “taking American jobs.” Now, no matter what one thinks of the validity of Trump’s assertion (and I have strong doubts), it is also the oldest of all the arguments against unauthorized immigrants. More recent discussions surrounding post-9/11 security or the effect on local and state government budgets are either given lip service or completely ignored. In effect, Donald Trump is running the campaign he would have run had he entered the 2000 race (which he nearly did, as a Reform Party candidate). It’s as if he hasn’t noticed how much has changed in 16 years.
As for Bush, the tendrils of the past that hold him back are harder to see, but they are more than the considerable rust that he is still shaking off. On his signature issue (education reform), he is campaigning as if Washington-directed reform is still politically viable – as if No Child Left Behind never happened. While his position on unauthorized immigration is quite different from Trump’s, he falls for ethnic labeling (“Asian people” and so forth) that, while acceptable in the last century, is recognized by most modern campaigns and campaigners as highly problematic (at best) in this one.
Ironically, the greatest revelation of how deeply anchored Bush is in the past comes from his own Virginia campaign co-chairs: a former Congressman, a former bureau chief for his brother, and a former Lieutenant Governor.
The 2016 Republican field has many candidates ready to address the future without getting lost in the 1990s, but the two candidates most deeply mired in the past are the ones sucking most of the oxygen out of the room. What that says about the Republican Party is disturbing enough. If either man were to become the nominee, it would create the bizarre situation where the Democrats – defending an outgoing Administration with a likely nominee over 65 – would be the more future-oriented party by comparison.
The GOP cannot win in that scenario, and as such, should not nominate either of Yesterday’s Men.
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