Jeb’s Retreads

Jeb Bush says he loves his father and brother but "I am my own man." 

You couldn't tell it by his choice of foreign policy advisors unveiled last week.  With 19 or 21 of the names on his list having worked for his father or his brother – or both – they look like a collection of retreads.  The only name missing was a Cheney.

If you loved those Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and you think Barack Obama done you wrong by ending them and starting any big new ones, you'll love Jeb and his retreads.  Big brother may have made "some mistakes," Jeb conceded, but his surge was "one of the most heroic acts of courage" of any president and "it created the stability" and whatever went wrong was all Obama's fault.

His speech, which even contained the family trait for mispronunciations and malapropisms, sounded like recycled neocon policies. He accused Barack Obama of turning his back on Israel, but offered no ideas of his own on how he would approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Syrian civil war, the Iranian nuclear threat or Islamic terrorism.

But there's plenty of time for that in what promises to be a very long run-up to the 2016 campaign.  The first-out-of-the-starting-gate Iowa Caucuses are just under a year away.  Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy – and ugly — ride.