Free Republic

Before he was elected governor of Florida in 1998, Jeb Bush "often benefited from his family connections and repeatedly put himself in situations that raised questions about his judgment and exposed him to reputational risk," report Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Tom Hamburger in The Washington Post, noting that five of Bush's business associates have been convicted of crimes. Bush, who cites his business experience to bolster his run for president, says that he was taken advantage of by unscrupulous businessmen and had no knowledge of wrongdoing. The Post found that Bush's intervention with federal officials helped one later-convicted fraudster get...

The Washington Post has a story today about 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush's unfortunate habit of getting involved in business deals destined to crumble and make him look bad. The problem is widespread enough that his career is littered with a graveyard of hilariously halfhearted explanations for his mistakes from friends, staffers, and Bush himself. In 1998 — shortly before he became governor of Florida, Bush told the St. Petersburg Times, according to the Post, “I’m 45 years old. I have to have better radar.” Bush's running mate in his failed gubernatorial bid in 1994, Tom Feeney, argued that the...

In early 1989, seven weeks after his father moved into the White House, Jeb Bush took a trip to Nigeria. Nearly 100,000 Nigerians turned out to see him over four days as he accompanied the executives of a Florida company called Moving Water Industries, which had just retained Bush to market the firm’s pumps. Escorted by the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, Bush met with the nation’s political and religious leaders as part of an MWI effort to land a deal that would be worth $80 million.