In the words of the great game theorist and cartoon viking, Hagar the Horrible,

[rogerashton]

“It's important to look at things from the other guy's point of view -- that way he can't pull any surprise moves on you.”

In that spirit I’m going to try to channel JEB Bush. Nothing that follows is my thinking – it is the Bush of my imagination.

As I move toward my presidency, my biggest asset is also my biggest liability. That is the presidencies of my father and brother. They are assets, make no mistake. After all, Bushes have batted .750 in presidential general elections, and Dad would have won in 92 if that joker Perot hadn’t sabotaged him. And the team and personal contacts that made their presidencies successful are mostly still in place. But there is a lot of criticism. Now the critics on both sides are naïve – Bush actions spring from an understanding of the realities of power that few other presidents, if any, have possessed. But the naïve vote is pretty decisive, so I’ll need to do more than say “I am my own man.”

The biggest obstacle is in some ways the easiest, and I mean the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was not Bush, it was bipartisan. That will work especially with my most probable opponent, Hillary Clinton. And everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since can be blamed on Obama. He withdrew our troops too soon – never mind that my brother set the timetable for that; the naïve vote has a short memory – and in general Obama has not given the show of American strength that would have kept the region under control. That’s the line to take.

(Of course, Dad’s misstep in ‘90, when he threatened Kuwait with an Iraqi invasion to persuade them to keep their oil prices down, set the whole Iraq disaster in motion. But how could Dad have known that Saddam would double-cross him and carry the invasion out, without so much as asking for clearance? After all, Saddam had been a loyal Bush client, I mean American client. But that was why he had to be dealt with. We can’t have it seem that a client can double-cross a Bush, I mean an American president, and not pay the consequences. Then Clinton accidently was elected president, and instead of ratcheting up the pressure until Saddam was overthrown, Clinton lets Saddam hold on until there is a Bush is a position to finish him off. Damned weak Democrats. But all that is buried deep – who cares what was reported on page 9 in the newspapers 25 years ago?)

The prosperity of the Clinton period is actually a little awkward. Not that Clinton had anything to do with it. Clinton had the good luck to follow my father, and got the benefit of Dad’s policies. But I can’t say that. What I will say about the Clinton prosperity is that it just never happened. After the rising prosperity of the Reagan-Bush era, the middle class wasted away during the Clinton years. After all, we who are powerful create our own truth.

I can’t claim my Dad’s policies created the prosperity of the 90’s because those policies are awkward: Dad raised taxes, and taxes are radioactive to my donors. And I certainly can’t tell them candidly that the taxes will be shifted to the working class. If I do, somebody will have a smartphone, and even to mention the phrase “working class” is to be a bloodthirsty Bolshevik. Even tax reform is a no-no, since you have to raise some taxes to cut others. But I haven’t signed the Norquist tax pledge because I am the reasonable adult in the room. I can call for tax simplification. After all, tax simplification means lower rates – and talk about the elimination of loopholes is always OK since nobody thinks his own tax benefits are loopholes. I can appoint a distinguished commission to work on tax simplification. A bipartisan commission. There are plenty of Democrats happy to shift more taxes onto the working class.

Immigration will be a problem in the primaries. The tea-partiers and former Reagan Democrats don’t want immigrants competing for their jobs, and that is exactly what I and my donors do want. I’m just going to have to tough that one out. The message to the tea-partiers will be that if they do not vote for a Republican who can win, the Democrats will open the doors and they will definitely lose their jobs to aliens. But that message will come from stand-ins, not from me. I will be the “adult in the room” and throw a lot of money in personal negative adds against other Republican candidates who are unwise enough to oppose me on that.

Education policies could be awkward, too. National standards are necessary to give my donors the productive employees they need, and they are a great club to beat the teachers’ unions with. But everybody, left and right, hates the standardized examinations. I need to develop the idea that we need better tests – no, let’s make that better methods of objectively measuring the performance of the schools. Everybody likes objectivity – until they experience it. This might be another job for another bipartisan commission.