I believe it was Chris Hayes I heard ask last night: Will Trump, in the debate next week, "be terrible or great"? All I recall from the guest's answer was what it should have been, which raced through my mind: Trump will do terribly, and his mushrooming base will say he did great. In a way, he will do great, because, utterly devoid of empirical knowledge or any rational policy prescriptions moving forward, he will shoot not so much from the hip (or "from the lip," as Politico frames it) as he will shoot from the gut. And that, above all else, is what the Republican base admires.
Meanwhile, Bush is up to his usual misapprehension of What in hell is going on. "After a week mostly away from the campaign trail," reports Politico, "Jeb Bush will hunker down with top advisers for what aides described as 'intense debate preparation' starting this weekend in Miami." It's reported as well that Bush is "paring down his deep policy knowledge [irony unintended] into sharper, cleaner responses that fit the first debate’s 90-second time limit." Kinda sad.
An anonymous debate coach says this of the 10 participants (OK, nine):
They’ll be thinking about strategy, how they want to handle the debate, what their message will be, how they’re going to handle other candidates onstage — and then they’re going to think about how they can create an instance in the debate where they get the attention of the audience. They’ll be thinking about their one-liners and their 'sayables' — phrases they can use that are going to get picked up.
That last advice is all Jeb Bush needs to embrace. Go for anti-Trump one-liners, zingers, punchy 10-second soundbites. "Paring down" his policy knowledge — the authentically knowledgeable parts of which the Republican base detests — is an absolute waste of time. This "debate" will be a shootout, nothing more, and the media will endlessly loop only the bloodiest segments.
Humorous shots will score more points and earn the most media coverage. In short, what Bush needs are merely a passable memory and a first-rate joke writer, not pared-down policies and a debate coach.
It might not match Trump's stand-up routine, but at least it's something, which Bush seems to lack.