Bush endorses McBride

SK Bubba draws my attention to this brilliant piece of politicking by Florida's McBride:

Bill McBride, the Democratic nominee for governor, has bagged the biggest endorsement of his campaign: Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.

"He really is one of the great Floridians of our time," Bush says of McBride -- the same opponent the governor has been attacking as a "reckless corporate lawyer" in ads for months.

Bush's high praise, videotaped for an awards ceremony at McBride's former law firm in 1999, begins airing today statewide. The McBride campaign has made Bush's remarks the centerpiece of a new TV ad challenging the governor for running attack ads against McBride.

"Does Jeb Bush believe his own negative ads? " the McBride spot asks. "You be the judge."

Jeb's people are countering with a newspaper article in which McBride praised Bush -- doesn't have quite the impact as the Jeb's videotaped praise. Best of all, this first commercial only has a few seconds of the 5-minute videotape. McBride's people plan on cutting it up into multiple commercials.

"It's a brilliant piece of strategy," says Wayne Bailey, a longtime political scientist at Stetson University and Democratic state committeeman.

"That's really going to confuse the mass electorate, isn't it? " Bailey says. "Bush will have to say, 'I lied, I really didn't mean that,' or, 'He's changed.' "

Given that the electorate has already seen the "devious" side of Jeb, this ad could very well reinforce the voters' worst fears about Jeb's sincerity.

Update: Here's a link to the Real Video version of the ad.

Posted October 25, 2002 08:03 AM | Comments (10)