When Jeb Bush said "look, stuff happens", it reminded me that, well, Jeb Bush is a clod. He just says things in a bog-stupid manner, and it seems to be a family trait. One could easily imagine a future President Jeb Bush (well, not really) meeting with the families of the recently-bereaved, and looking into their eyes to offer words of solace:
"I am so sorry, but you know. Stuff happens."
Now, maybe he didn't mean it in a numb and callous way. But he is a professional politician running for president, and he seems to be saying, when we enlarge upon his comments, that in his experience as governor, things do happen, and we shouldn't just do something about them because Eh! We might be wrong.
Right. And what was Roosevelt supposed to do when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor? Say "stuff happens" and then slink off until things were cooler and calmer? The thing is, guns in the US kill thousands of people a year, competitive with car crashes and cancer. We do rather a lot to try to stop terrorists, but we don't seem moved to do the least bit more over gun violence, even though gun violence is snuffing our people at a greater rate.
The kicker is--what are politicians for if not policy in reaction to problems? Does he think he doesn't ever have to address issue, because as it happens, there are always recent victims here? We are always in the heat of a moment of some death somewhere in our borders.
It's not just the cloddishness of Bush's words. It's the reality that "stuff happens" might as well be code for "The NRA makes me crap myself." He'd act over Terry Schiavo--see? But not tens of thousands dead each year. Even though we can see that gun laws, enacted state by state, do have an impact.
Bush doesn't have the compassion thing. He doesn't have the vision thing. He doesn't have any of the things that make someone presidential. Even his DNA and name recognition only seem to make his obvious lacks, worse.
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