If Jeb Bush represents the last gasp of the WASP power structure, then who won? <\/p>\n
New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n DERRY, N.H. \u2014 Tennis. Boating. Summers at Walker\u2019s Point.<\/p>\n Life among the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite (or WASPs, in sociological shorthand) was good for a young John Ellis Bush.<\/p>\n James Bruner, whose father was the Bush family pastor at St. Ann\u2019s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport, Me., remembers Mr. Bush, known as Jeb, as a larger-than-life presence at the Kennebunk River Club. His enduring image is of a youthful Mr. Bush \u201cplaying tennis in tennis whites\u201d \u2014 a white Lacoste shirt, white shorts and canvas sneakers.<\/p>\n But that era of polite and high society \u2014 on the courts and playing fields of New England, in the halls of boarding schools and in the corridors of government \u2014 is fast fading. And in many ways, the travails of Mr. Bush\u2019s presidential campaign can be seen as perhaps the last, wheezing gasp of the WASP power structure.<\/p>\n Against a frustrated, profoundly un-WASP-like Republican electorate that craves the visceral pugnaciousness of Donald J. Trump or the outsider anger of Senator Ted Cruz, Mr. Bush\u2019s family values \u2014 of cordial restraint, of civil discourse, of earnest public service \u2014 can seem almost quaint.<\/p>\n Mr. Bush tells voters who wonder why he cannot summon Mr. Trump\u2019s TV-friendly fury that he \u201cwasn\u2019t brought up that way.\u201d He struggles with a basic task in politics \u2014 bragging \u2014 conceding that, when he does, he feels \u201cthe looming presence of Barbara Bush,\u201d his boast-averse mother. And in an age of topic-changing sound bites, he is oddly determined to respond to every inquiry.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had 62 years of life that\u2019s been jammed into my DNA that when someone asks you a question, you answer it,\u201d he said recently.<\/p>\n Longtime friends still speak with admiration of Mr. Bush\u2019s anachronistic outlook, sounding a bit like Miss Manners tsk-tsking the political world for leaving its elbows on the table.<\/p>\n C. Boyden Gray, who served as White House counsel under the elder Bush, ticked through the code of conduct the Bush dynasty has long embodied: \u201cCivility and good manners were kind of assumed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would be generous to a loser, you would not boast about your victory, you would be civil during an engagement, but you\u2019d use every trick you had, every skill you had to win,\u201d Mr. Gray continued. \u201cThey represented a whole generation of people, and I think a whole way of looking at things has been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If Jeb Bush represents the last gasp of the WASP power structure, then who won? New York Times: DERRY, N.H. \u2014 Tennis. Boating. Summers at Walker\u2019s Point. Life among the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite (or WASPs, in sociological shorthand) was … Continue reading