The ballsy fiction is that Jeb Bush is not yet a presidential candidate, a fiction that permits him and his super-PAC staff to solicit plutocratic johns like the best little whorehouse in Florida. So be it, not to worry, such fiction is a common plot in our Gilded Age redux. What does worry is that because Jeb isn't yet an official candidate, he can't yet have an official theme song. This is a sad but necessary omission. We are unable to connect Jeb to anything catchy, since the man himself is as uncatchy and bland as a 2 a.m. House floor speech. But I'm sure that Jeb and his staff are sifting through theme-song possibilities in preparation for that glorious day when he becomes official. And the most obvious choice of thematic lyrics is this, from the Steelers Wheel, 1972:
Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I get so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
There's clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.
Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Lose control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
There's clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
Reasonable people can disagree with the thrust of those lyrics in connection to Jeb Bush. In the primary season, they manifestly wouldn't apply. There's only one clown to the left of him in a weird sort of libertarian way, and changing the lyrics to reflect that reality would severely injure the song's approximate iambic pentameter. As for jokers to the right? The Republican field, save for the one exception already noted, is closely packed into a Laffable, Pattonesque herd that renders no further-rightward maneuverability.
But come the general election we'll open our post-primary readers, and … See Dick. See this Dick run. See this Dick run to the middle.
He'll be all over the place — as he already has been in his herding maneuvers — and watching him try to keep that smile from his face will also bring one to ours.
It's the perfect theme song for Jeb Bush.