Jeb Bush almost makes me long for brother George

As readers of ShrinkRap well know, I am not a fan of George W. Bush.    And the more I know about his brother Jeb, I like Jeb even less.   Let's hope it does not come to pass that there's reason to even think about the Bushes much longer.    The way Jeb's campaign keeps going off the rails suggessts there's hope.

Laura Bassett of Huffington Post wrote about Jeb's idea of restoring shame as a way of trying to reduce out of wedlock births.    This was not a slip in the heat of a political rally.   He wrote a whole chapter on it in his 1995 book Profiles in Character.   Here are some quotes:

"One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. . . .  There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful."

He then cites the 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter as the way people were historically punished by public shaming -- which he seems to want to restore.   He also implied that the welfare system could use a healthy dose of shame as well.   “For many, it is more shameful to work than to take public assistance -- that is how backward shame has become!”

And then there was this:

"In the context of present-day society we need to make kids feel shame before their friends rather than their family. The Miami Herald columnist Robert Steinback has a good idea. He suggests dressing these juveniles in frilly pink jumpsuits and making them sweep the streets of their own neighborhoods! Would these kids be so cavalier then?" 

Yes, the book was published 20 years ago;   but it was not just youthful excess.   He was 42 and only four years away from becoming governor of what is now the fourth most populous state in the U. S.

More than that:   His book title is Profiles in Character.   He was writing about character -- and his view on fostering shame is a measure of Jeb Bush's character.   It's not a pretty thing.    It fits perfectly with the stories of this moralizing prig's prep school arrogance, when he led a ring of boys in shaming a fellow student who wore his hair long and seemed to be gay.   They held him down and cut his hair off, as he screamed and begged them to stop.

And it also fits with his maniacal obsession with prolonging the life of the brain-dead Terri Shiavo, despite her husband's and the court's legal-rights decisions otherwise.   He even used his authority as governor to have criminal charges brought against her husband (See ShrinkRap posts from 2/5/15 and 3/16/15.)

So, while we're all having our moments of schadenfreude over the organizational problems roiling the Bush campaign right now, let's remember that, at the heart of that campaign, is the man himself.    This man should not be president because of his character, regardless of his policy positions.

Ralph