Jeb Bush Falls Into a Trap
Jeb Bush went to the border town of McAllen, Tex., on Monday to raise money and to talk about immigration, in English and fluent Spanish. Because the Republican presidential campaign has been so fixated on border security and the immigrant peril — thank you, Donald Trump — it was a chance to see how the supposed expert on this fraught subject handled it.
Short version: He was awful.
In less than 15 minutes, Mr. Bush managed to step on his message, to give Mr. Trump a boost and to offend Asian-Americans, a growing population that is every bit as important as Latinos in winning presidential elections. And he failed to give Latino voters any persuasive evidence that he had anything better to offer them than his opponents in a revoltingly xenophobic Republican campaign.
It may be time to offer this forlorn candidate some free advice. Although if he really is the smarter Bush, he knows these things already:
1. He should never let himself say the words “anchor babies” ever again. He got in trouble for using that derogatory reference to the children of unauthorized immigrants in passing, in an interview, then dug himself a hole by defending his use of it. On Monday, he dug deeper. He tried to explain that he had been talking about “Asian people” who arrive on tourist visas through organized schemes to give birth to American babies on American soil.
Though the phenomenon is real, Mr. Bush was blasted by Asian-American groups for repeating the slur. And, astoundingly, he handed Mr. Trump the opportunity to send out tweets like this: “In a clumsy move to get out of his ‘anchor babies’ dilemma, where he signed that he would not use the term and now uses it, he blamed ASIANS.”
It was such an unnecessary battle to wade into — maternity tourism is not what Mr. Trump and his enablers on the restrictionist right are talking about. When they say “anchor babies,” they are talking about the browning of America, with its growing Latino population, and recasting it as a sinister plot by child-rearing Mexicans. They want to upend the 14thAmendment, and the country’s family-based immigration laws, to keep the population as white as can be. Maternity tourism by middle-class foreigners is a separate, much smaller issue; changing the Constitution to stop it, as one immigrant rights advocate once put it, is like killing a fly with an Uzi.
2.Mr. Bush should lighten up. He probably wants to come across as a happy warrior, but he’s a testy and peevish one, and pedantic, to boot. “If he’s interested in a more comprehensive approach” to immigration, Mr. Bush said of Mr. Trump, “he might want to read my book.” As reporters kept baiting him with he-said-this-what-do-you-say questions, Mr. Bush’s exasperation overflowed. Hence the Asian quagmire.
3. His campaign should get better at stage-managing press events. This one, at a Mexican restaurant, was weirdly free-form, with kids yelling and assorted invitees mumbling at the microphone. The grim, adobe-and-stucco backdrop was like a Spanish colonial dungeon; it looked as if the grim-faced Mr. Bush had come to announce the arrest of Zorro.
4. When he does choose to tell the truth, he should find a more persuasive way to do it. On Monday, he attacked the Trump immigration plan, which centers on building a Great Wall of Mexico and forcing millions of people to the other side of it. “It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars,” Mr. Bush said, as well as “violate people’s civil liberties” and “create friction with our third-largest trading partner.” That is a fair reading of what Mr. Trump wants. But to win the nomination, Mr. Bush has to win over a fair chunk of the aggrieved, frightened Trump voters, who probably don’t care about trade friction with rapist-killer-exporting countries, or the cost of a border wall. Mr. Bush may have better ideas, but they have to cut through the fog of Trump.
It’s commonly believed that Republicans are sealing their general-election doom with all this hating on immigrants. If anyone could avoid that fate, it should be someone like Jeb Bush, born in Midland, Tex., and reared in Houston, with a Latina wife, Latino children and flawless command of Spanish. Even as Mr. Trump rages and bellows, there should be room for a Republican to send a message that most American voters, who are moderate on immigration, will hear. But for all his paper qualifications, Mr. Bush has been angering to many, boring to many others, inspiring to none. And then he goes and gets lectured on ethnic sensitivity by Donald Trump.