A plan to energize
1. Add another exclamation mark to your posters and bumper stickers, so that they look like this: "Jeb!!"
This will put you ahead on the charisma meter, because most other candidates don't even use one exclamation point on their campaign signs!
2. Provide unlimited
Free coffee would be one way to make sure your supporters appear enthusiastic and alert while you're explaining your position on, say, Common Core.
To attract more young people, offer cans of
3. Play cooler music at your campaign rallies.
4. Work on your wardrobe.
Lose the baby-blue
Unpressed stonewashed jeans -- would that blow their buttoned-down minds? Khakis are what they'd be expecting from a Bush, but jeans and Skechers?
Boom!!
5. Tone down the whole
At this point, everybody in the country knows you were governor of
That's probably because too many prospective voters have either been to
These days, folks in
While on the campaign trail, you'd be better off speaking in broad terms about your experience as the two-term leader of a dynamic, fast-growing Southern state.
Just leave it at that.
6. At the next television debate, don't stand next to Trump.
This is not an issue of height, or hair. You definitely are taller than he is, and you obviously don't have hair plugs taken from an orangutan's armpit.
However, Trump is so loud and bombastic that he makes those around him fade into the background. The best way to distance yourself from this preening gasbag is to physically distance yourself.
Demand a podium at the farthest end of the row of candidates, preferably beside
7. Start spending serious money on ads.
In six months your super PAC raised
But now the wealthy donors who gave you all that dough are watching your poll numbers drop and wondering if they made the right choice. If you don't turn things around pretty soon, you could wake up with
So use some of that huge stash and crank out a few ads, fast. Go warm and fuzzy at first -- generic family stuff. If you've got a dog, put him in the commercial.
Next aim for the seasoned, thoughtful, hardworking Jeb -- rolling-up-the sleeves type of footage, though please, G0D, not in the
8. Get mad. Or at least pretend to be mad.
Waiting for Trump to flame out might seem like a sound strategy, but in the meantime you'd better lock up second place. Would it hurt to fight back a little harder?
The jerk slurred your wife's national heritage, yet you never braced him about it during the first debate, when he's standing right beside you.
Sometimes there's a fine line between mild-mannered and wimpy. No one's expecting you to morph into an electrifying personality at age 62, but they do expect evidence of a pulse.
Come on, Jeb! Or, even better, Jeb!!
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Carl Hiaasen is an award-winning columnist for The Miami Herald.