The old line Republican big money Establishment has been lining up firmly behind Jeb Bush. And when he launched his new PAC-- The Right To Rise-- yesterday, it was a play for that kind of concentrated wealth. Although Bush comes from a wealthy family, his net worth when he left the Florida's governor's mansion was only $1.3 million. People assumed he was a lot richer-- and he wanted to be. "I want to be very wealthy, and I'll be glad to tell you when I've accomplished that goal," he once bragged. Bush joined corporate boards, advised corporate clients, and-- like Hillary-- gave speeches to corporate groups. He's padded his accounts by millions.
Bush sat on the board of one company called InnoVida, a Florida firm that manufactured building materials. Until, that is, the company's president was indicted and it went bankrupt. Bush sat on the board of a soap company that collapsed, prompting lawsuits. He advised Lehman Brothers, the financial firm whose collapse helped trigger the 2008 economic meltdown, by unsuccessfully reaching out to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim for a bailout. (That plan was called "Project Verde," which is a little on the nose.)It's unlikely that, barring a Bob McDonnell-style revelation surrounding InnoVida or another company, that these failures will do a whole lot to create obstacles for Bush in 2016. What might is his tenure on the board of Tenet Healthcare, which earned him $2 million. Tenet stands to make millions from Obamacare, and broadly supports the policy-- which Republican voters are much more likely to treat with skepticism.But it's a weird world in which we live where a guy worth $1.3 million is desperate to bolster his savings account. Last year, Congress for the first time became a majority millionaire; we are unsurprised, however cynical it may be, for our elected officials to both be rich and to be able to leverage their tenures in politics for even greater wealth. That's the impetus that drove Bush, it seems, sitting on the boards of six different companies at once to reel in cash as fast as possible.
Oddly enough, the Right To Rise PAC website sounds like they are more interested in appealing to Elizabeth Warren's crowd than to the Republican plutocrats and Wall Street crooks who will actually pay for the Jeb campaign. But I guess, that's the way it's supposed to sound. GOP operative William Canfield III said Bush will have no trouble raising funds, but faces a challenge winning over GOP voters in primary states. "All the conventional big-dollar Republicans are going to want to curry favor with him because he is the putative nominee, but that doesn’t mean his message will sell to the public." If you expected Hillary to coopt Warren's message, this is just a precursor, an exercise in shameless, superficial hucksterism:
We believe passionately that the Right to Rise-- to move up the income ladder based on merit, hard work and earned success-- is the central moral promise of American economic life. We are optimists who believe that America’s opportunities have never been greater than they are right now. But we know America is falling short of its promise.Millions of our fellow citizens across the broad middle class feel as if the American Dream is now out of their reach; that our politics are petty and broken; that opportunities are elusive; and that the playing field is no longer fair or level. Too many of the poor have lost hope that a path to a better life is within their grasp. While the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they’ve been a lost decade for the rest of America. We are not leading-- at home or abroad.