"My brother is a big boy. His administration was shaped by his thinking, his reaction to the attack on 9/11."

"I think my dad, like a lot of people that love George, want to try to create a different narrative, perhaps, just because that’s natural to do."

Said Jeb Bush, who's trying to run for President and has to deal with his very elderly father saying some awkwardly critical things relating to his older brother.

George H.W. Bush, writing in his diary in 1988, called Michael Dukakis "midget nerd."

I'm looking for things in the the NYT article "Elder Bush Says His Son Was Served Badly by Aide" that you may not have already noticed.

After defeating the "midget nerd" in 1988, Bush wound up a one-term President, losing to Bill Clinton. I don't know what 2-word epithets he may have aimed at Clinton, but I see that, instead of going on to fight for the second term, he considered — over a year and a half before the election — announcing that he was not going to run for a second term:

He would “call a press conference in about November and just turn it loose,” he said in the audio diary. “You need someone in this job” who could give his “total last ounce of energy, and I’ve had” that “up until now, but now I don’t seem to have the drive.”

Energy. That's Trump's favorite buzzword, used most notably against Elder Bush's son Jeb.

More from the diary, making the job of President sound horrible:

“Maybe it’s the letdown after the day-to-day” 5 a.m. calls “to the Situation Room; conferences every single day with Defense and State; moving things, nudging things, worrying about things, phone calls to foreign leaders, trying to keep things moving forward, managing a massive project.... Now it’s different, sniping, carping, bitching, predictable editorial complaints.”

As for the criticism of Cheney and Rumsfeld, I'll briefly note Elder Bush's tendency to call everyone "iron-ass":

"[Dick Cheney] just became very hard-line.... Just iron-ass...."

“I’ve concluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the eminence grise here – iron-ass, tough as nails, driving,” he said...

“I think [Rumsfeld] served the president badly... I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything...."

"As much as Poppy Bush scoffs at 'the D-word,' as he calls any reference to dynasty, the Bushes do consider themselves an American royal family."

"They have always pretty much divided the world into Bushes and the help. The patriarch once sent me a funny satire referring to himself and Barbara as the Old King and Queen, W. as King George of Crawford and Jeb as the Earl of Tallahassee. At 91, 41 is living to see Jebbie become president. He is mystified by a world in which Trump, whom he considers a clown, could dethrone the crown prince."

Writes Maureen Dowd, who's been looking closely at the Bushes for a long time. ("In 1993, I went on the road to watch Jeb run for governor in Florida and W. run for governor in Texas.... It was soon clear to me that the Good Son was not as scintillating a campaigner as the Prodigal Son... This was going to be the year that settled sibling scores. Jeb would get what his parents considered his birthright....")

I was interested in the phrase "divided the world into Bushes and the help." The help. That reminds me of a discussion here on the blog the other day. I'd written "Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud allegedly yelled at 3 female servants in his mansion near Beverly Hills," and a commenter, Carol, said: "I had no idea they were still called 'servants' in this country." And SOJO said: "Servants"? Wtf? Employees." I scrambled to defend myself against what I see as a charge of political incorrectness. I posted 4 comments in quick succession.

1. I took responsibility:

That was my word choice. The LA Times called them "workers."

2. I defended myself:

What's wrong with "servants"? If something is wrong with it, then we shouldn't have switched to calling waiters and waitresses "servers."

3. I re-defended myself:

"Servants" seems like the right word for people who occupy the servants' quarters within a house, especially when the reference is to a big estate with a lot of personnel serving a rich person, a person who might say things like this prince did. ["I am a prince and I do what I want! You are nobody!"]

4. I retreated into scholarship and distanced humility:

From the OED, there's this historical context that might explain an aversion to the word: "b. In the North American colonies in the 17–18th c., and subsequently in the United States, servant was the usual designation for a slave.... 1852 H. B. Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin II. xxii. 67 Why don't we teach our servants to read?"

The idea that "employees" was the right word struck me as wrong. Particular jobs have names, and "employee" isn't the name of a job. What's the name for employees who live in someone else's house and do all sorts of work that might be required within the household? Is it the word Dowd used, "help"? Or did Dowd use "help" because it's amusing to deploy somebody else's euphemism? Is "servant" insulting?

Oddly enough, Jeb Bush likes to call himself a "servant":

"There are a lot of talkers in politics," Bush said. "Trust me, I was on the debate stage, I see it; some really good people that are really good talkers. I hope you want someone with a servant's heart, that acts on principles — that does things rather than just talks about them."

What George W. Bush said about Ted Cruz: "I just don’t like the guy."

As reported by those who were there at a meeting of about 100 donors.

“The tenor of what he said about the other candidates was really pretty pleasant,” another donor said. “Until he got to Cruz.”

Oh, he's just trying to help his brother and a standard way to diminish Cruz is to nudge people to think of him as unelectable because he's unlikable. Why that's the standard thing for him — as with Hillary — must have something to do with the way he strikes some people, something about the face, the voice. It's on an animal level. Inexplicable. George Bush was just playing on that, the little rascal.

Did Jake Tapper "destroy" Jeb Bush with the question how can we blame Hillary for Benghazi if we can't blame George W. Bush for 9/11?

If you think Jeb is disastrous here, I'd say you're averse to his style and manner of speech — not just on this issue, but on everything. It's not that different from what bugged some people about his brother and that was mocked in his father. There's something modest and mild that reads to me as an expression of good character, but I know that's not how everyone sees it and the question Republicans face is who they want making their argument that they deserve the power of the presidency. I can see fretting about whether Jeb can step up and get the message across.

ADDED: Something I said in the comments: "There is so much more Jeb could have said making the distinction. He just doesn't have a go-for-the-jugular instinct. His deer-in-the-headlights moment was very similar to Mitt Romney's disastrous self-restraint in the second debate with Obama. I think that moment is indicative of a conscience, but it wrecked Romney's momentum and began his journey to electoral defeat."

Obama bombed a hospital.

Where is the outrage?

ADDED: At the link, which goes to my son John's Facebook page, I said: "Imagine if Bush had done this." And John said: "We don't have to imagine..." and linked to a NYT article from 2008: "Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid."

From Amy Davidson at The New Yorker: "Five Questions About the Bombing of a Hospital in Kunduz":

What did the Afghan forces want us to bomb? This is the fundamental issue: Was the hospital the target, or was the target something or someone “in the vicinity”?...

Why didn’t the bombing stop? It went on for an hour, in multiple waves, although [Doctors Without Borders, which runs the hospital] has said that it immediately called contacts in Afghanistan, Washington, D.C., and wherever else it could think of—it is used to operating in war zones, and has the phone numbers for calls like that—to try to get the attack stopped. Who was on the other end of the line? Did those interlocutors make further calls, to Afghans or Americans? General Campbell, asked by reporters if the Pentagon knew about the calls, said that it was a question for investigators. But, in this instance, the matter of communications gets to questions larger than logistics, such as... Do we understand our allies’ motives and priorities in Afghanistan?

ALSO: My phrase "Where is the outrage?" sounds like a stock phrase with a particular reference point, but what? Meade says it's from the 1996 presidential campaign. Bob Dole said it:

Sounding like a crusader, Bob Dole implored his audiences today to ''rise up'' against the nation's news organizations, which he said were protecting the Clinton Administration, and be outraged that President Clinton had, in Mr. Dole's words, violated the public trust....

Listing a string of questionable practices by the Administration, including accepting what he called laundered cash from foreigners and obtaining confidential F.B.I. files, Mr. Dole demanded repeatedly in Houston earlier in the day, ''Where is the outrage?''

Appearing at downtown performing arts center, where he stood before a giant mural depicting the glory days of the Lone Star State, Mr. Dole continued: ''Can you imagine former President Bush doing one of those things? No! And you never imagine Bob Dole doing one of those things either. So where's the outrage? Where's the outrage? When will the voters start to focus?''

The history of the word "politicize" — from 1968 to 2015.

May 1968: "S.D.S. is out to politicize the campus."

September 1973:  "It was not simply a matter of increasing numbers, but of the highly politicized manner in which additional blacks found their way into Harvard — overcoming nearly a century of racial and sociological barriers to a sizable presence at Harvard. Militancy and political threats perpetrated by Negro students in 1968-70 paved the way for major alterations in Harvard's recruiting and admissions policies. This resulted in a fivefold increase in black enrollment, but the politization surrounding this development plagued virtually all aspects of black-white relationships, dividing blacks and whites in to mutually exclusive communities." From "The black experience at Harvard," by Martin Kilson.

August 1976: Back when Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer, was getting the Democratic nomination: "Planters [Peanuts] has been the focus of recent efforts to politicize peanuts, such as the recent Democratic National Convention to 'borrow' its Mr. Peanut mascot. 'Mr. Peanut is an apolitical figure'..."

January 1979: Pope John Paul II in Mexico City: "You know that liberation theology is a true theology... But perhaps it is also a false theology, because if one starts to politicize theology, apply doctrines of political systems, ways of analysis which are not Christian, then this is no longer theology."

September 1980: "On the Lower East Side in the late 60's, his aim was to politicize the hippies, not to make the larger world an adjunct to the counterculture." From a review of a new book by Abbie Hoffman.

December 1986: "In 1966, Mao turned to radical Shanghai students to trigger the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long upheaval intended to politicize every facet of Chinese life."
 
November 1992: Hugh Hefner is quoted: "I think the real question is why, after a sexual revolution began in the 50's, did the women's movement seize upon an anti-sexual theme.... A significant part of the hurtful side of feminism is failing to understand how a hurtful childhood can shape you, and instead trying to politicize all behavior. There's really no benefit to viewing sex as the enemy. The sex act is some of the best of what we are, as family, and as a civilization. The notion that sex and violence are connected like law and order is untrue. They are polar opposites. One is hurting; one is hugging."

January 1994: "Do you ever wonder if it was a mistake to politicize the private lives of politicians? Bill Clinton was rumored to have a Gary Hart-ish sexual life, yet he's turned out to be quite supportive of women's rights." From a Q&A with 3 female reporters.

May 1996: When Democratic Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts said that the Defense of Marriage bill was motivated by politics, he was accused of a "desperate attempt to politicize what is not a political issue."

September 1999: After shootings in a Fort Worth church, Texas Governor George W. Bush signed legislation permitting guns in churches, Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore started asking ''How can we allow guns in churches?'," and a Bush spokesman said: "Americans are tired of politicians trying to politicize every tragedy.'' 

December 1999: "Our political leaders must be judged on how they treat everyone, including the least fortunate. We must ask ourselves: do we solve problems or simply push them away, politicize them and criminalize them?'' said Hillary Clinton, about homeless people, whom Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was having arrested for sleeping on the streets.

April 2000: "Holding congressional hearings now would only further politicize this tragedy [of Elian Gonzalez], further inflame the passions, and do nothing to resolve the future of the child.... We should not allow this situation to degenerate further into which political party can benefit the most. Americans have made it clear that they do not want to see this issue politicized," wrote Republican Senator Chuck Hagel.

October 2004: "There have been faith-based efforts in America for years and years. There hasn't always been an effort to politicize it," said presidential candidate John Kerry speaking to a group of black pastors.

February 2012: "I think there’s been a chord struck over this issue, this issue of political organizations who are trying to politicize women’s reproductive health," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

October 2015: President Obama, after another mass shooting: "Somebody somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue. Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic."