Money, they say, makes the world go round. So how's $10 billion for you? That's a top-end estimate for the record-breaking spending in this 1% presidential election campaign season. But is "season" even the right word, now that such campaigns are essentially four-year events that seem always to be underway? In a political world stuffed with money, it's little wonder that the campaign season floats on a sea of donations. In the case of Jeb Bush, he and his advisers have so far had a laser-focus on the electorate they felt mattered most: big donors. They held off the announcement of his candidacy until last week (though he clearly long knew he was running) so that they could blast out of the gates, dollars-wise, leaving the competition in their financial dust, before the exceedingly modest limits to non-super PAC campaign fundraising kicked in.
And give Jeb credit -- or rather consider him a credit to his father (the 41st president) and his brother (the 43rd), who had Iraq eternally on their minds. It wasn't just that Jeb flubbed the Iraq Question when a reporter asked him recently (yes, he would do it all over again; no, he wouldn't... well, hmmm...), but that Iraq is deeply embedded in the minds of his campaign team, too. His advisers dubbed the pre-announcement campaign they were going to launch to pull in the dollars a "shock-and-awe" operation in the spirit of the invasion of Iraq. Now, having sent in the ground troops, they clearly consider themselves at war. As the New York Times reported recently, the group's top strategist told donors that his super PAC "hopes to 'weaponize' its fund-raising total for the first six months of the year."
The money being talked about: $80-$100 million raised in the first quarter of 2015 and $500 million by June. If reached, these figures would indeed represent shock-and-awe fundraising in the Republican presidential race. As of now, there's no way of knowing whether they're fantasy figures or not, but here's a clue to Jeb's money-raising powers: according to the Washington Post, his advisers have been asking donors not to give more than a million dollars now; they are, that is, trying to cap donations for the moment. (As the Post's Chris Cillizza wrote,"The move reflects concerns among Bush advisers that accepting massive sums from a handful of uber-rich supporters could fuel a perception that the former governor is in their debt.") And having spent just about every pre-announcement day for months doing fundraisers and scouring the country for money, while preserving the fiction that he might not be interested in the presidency, Jeb, according to the New York Times, bragged to a group of donors that "he believed his political action committee had raised more money in 100 days than any other modern Republican political operation."
Let's not forget, of course, that we're not talking about anyone; we're talking about a Bush. We're talking about the possibility of becoming number three (or rather Bush 45) in the Oval Office. We're talking about what is, by now, a fabled money-shaking, money-making, money-raising machine of a family. We're talking dynasty and when it comes to money and the Bushes (as with money and that other potential dynasty of our moment), no one knows more on the subject than Nomi Prins, former Wall Street exec and author of All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power. In her now ongoing TomDispatch series on the political dynasties of our moment, fundraising, and the Big Banks, think of her latest post, "Jeb! The Money! Dynasty!" as an essential backgrounder on the election you have less and less to do with, in which Wall Street, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and the rest of the crew do most of the essential voting with their wallets.