Ben Carson’s Jeb Bush Problem If Carson had the policy chops of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, he’d be over 50% in the polls. By Daniel Henninger
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ben-carsons-jeb-bush-problem-1446682979
Ben Carson is the candidate most Republicans would like to see become president. “Like” is the keyword. They like his demeanor, his personality and his remarkable life story. This personal affinity has translated into a six-point lead over Donald Trump in The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. His unfavorable numbers are the lowest in the poll.
Jeb Bush is the most qualified candidate to be president. For all the “establishment” criticism, any fair reading of his eight years in office shows it would be hard to design a more successful conservative governorship—lower taxes, limited spending, Medicaid reform, landmark school-choice initiatives. He left office in 2007 with a 60% approval rating.
With all this potential, how is it that Ben Carson and Jeb Bush have been the two most poorly prepared candidates in the GOP debates, including the undercard?
Ben Carson has been thinking of running for president since at least the 2013 White House prayer breakfast at which he criticized Barack Obama. Given his intellectual skills, one would think that during the two years of preparing for his presidential run, Mr. Carson might have absorbed more knowledge about the details of public issues than he has shown in these debates.
In the most recent debate, Mr. Carson said of his tax policy: “You also have to get rid of all the deductions and all the loopholes. You also have to do some strategic cutting in several places.”
Jeb Bush explains his debate performances by saying he’s a doer, not a talker. But how is it possible that someone operating at the highest level of American politics could go into these debates without committing to memory four or five set pieces about the core ideas of his candidacy? They’re only 60-seconds long.
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have done that. He hasn’t. He’s falling; they’re rising.
No serious candidate can go into such an unpredictable arena and expect to answer questions extemporaneously without eventually getting into trouble. On the evidence, both Messrs. Bush and Carson are performing without a net.
Mr. Bush has now made “fixing it” a Plan-B campaign theme, and maybe he will. In Des Moines, Iowa, last Saturday and in Tampa on Monday, Mr. Bush gave a comprehensive speech regarded as powerful and well-received by neutral observers. Iowan Ardys Anderson, who said Mr. Bush was “flat” in an October speech there, said Saturday: “He sounded like he was speaking from the heart . . . I thought he was great.”
Mr. Bush can’t succeed by lowering expectations for his debate performance. If he doesn’t plant in memory the three best parts of that Iowa speech for Tuesday’s debate, he’ll drift sideways and eventually out of the political conversation.
Mr. Carson, like Donald Trump, proves we are in uncharted waters. Mr. Carson is leading in the Iowa polls despite spending two days there in two months. Possibly the semi-opacity of Mr. Carson’s remarks doesn’t matter and charisma will win the nomination. But I doubt it. If he doesn’t sharpen his focus, the substantive and hyper-articulate Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz will erode his support in the primaries. If he had anything resembling their policy chops, he’d be over 50%.
Led by the Carson campaign, the candidates’ managers met in Virginia last Sunday to rethink the debates. They have a point. These things are in no way debates. They are mainly presentation exercises.
The “debates” tell us very little about the ability of these men or Carly Fiorina to govern the U.S. Dealing with Vladimir Putin keeps coming up. If that’s a criterion, then Scott Walker was the best choice, given his proven skill as a governor battling and defeating union thugs. But Scott Walker’s gone, in part, because he failed Debate 101.
If we may assume the Lincoln-Douglas debates won’t materialize before next Tuesday, Chris Christie is right: “Set up a stage, put podiums up there, and let’s just go.”
So:
If crony capitalism matters to conservatives, Marco Rubio should be made to explain his long support for federal sugar subsidies, which keep much of the sugar-cane growing Caribbean in a state of embarrassing poverty.
I’d like to hear Ted Cruz identify what he calls “New York billionaire Republican donors” who “despise our base.” Would that be the pro-Israel New York investor Paul Singer, who endorsed Marco Rubio because of his views on foreign policy?
Let’s hear more from Donald Trump on the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision on eminent domain.
You can’t say much in 60 seconds. But what little you do say better be good.
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