Not to get all political!
In reality, despite being a very political person, I tend to not be the biggest fan of political memes. There are some exceptions (I still quote "Pokémon Go to the Polls on the weekly), but there's just something that doesn't quite sit well with me for so many of them. Politics should be memed though; we as an American culture have been making fun of our government since its inception. Maybe I feel like we just reached a time in the last few years where all of this wasn't as funny anymore.
But you know what is funny?
JEB!
Jeb Bush might just be unintentionally the funniest candidate in US history, and most of it is at his expense. It's not just who he is, but also what he represents. Jeb Bush represents a dying, but once powerful dynasty of the Republican Party and there was something so satisfying in the moment seeing it all crash down. In 2015 when he announced his run, we were still in a time period where a Bush running for president meant that he would be a shoo-in. Right?
Well, enter Donald Trump. Say what you will about the man (which I have and will continue to do for my entire life), but you have to admit he completely upheaved everything the Republican Party was at the time. And it doesn't matter who you were or where you were on the political spectrum, the way he made Jeb Bush look like the pathetic little nepo-baby he was made us all laugh. But it wasn't really Trump that was why Jeb saw the end of the Bush political dynasty. He kinda did it to himself.
This was a man that didn't need to ever strongly convince an electorate in his life, and it was obvious that everyone around him made him think this primary would be no different. But when you compare the once-charismatic Trump of 2016 to Jeb, the wet blanket, he always faced an uphill battle.
The greatest representation of this was not long after he came in 6th in the Iowa primaries. He went viral of a clip of him doing a town hall giving a short speech, which at the end to silence he says the words, "Please clap". Oh geez, Jebby-boy, you aren't really doing yourself any favors.
After this, he did the "Hail Mary" of his dead campaign, getting Barbara Bush to appear with him for a couple interviews. This didn't help because it was pretty clear his 90-year old mother didn't really have much inspiring to say about him. And let's just say maybe the man who had long been criticized as not being tough enough to be president getting his mom to say he's cool didn't help that image problem. Bush suspended his campaign 2 weeks later.
Thankfully from all of this we get to remember maybe the funniest campaign of all time. Jeb Bush was a meme in 2016 and he seems to come back every presidential election since based on how terrible his campaign was. "Please, Clap" will always be the greatest meme to come from it all, but every election season we get new memes showing how he will come back and win the electoral college.
Of course he'll win. He's Jeb.
Jeb is a politician of a bygone era that, because of the memes, we can all look back upon fondly. It's easy to say we miss people like Jeb when we of course have what he was replaced with. But I think it's important to remember that we don't want to go back to that era either. With all that we can say about the world today and how modern politics can make us depressed, at least we can say "Let's smile because of Jeb Bush's terrible campaign".
