Jeb Bush on the bus: New candidate or same old story?
His campaign reeling and in urgent need of a reset, Jeb Bush returned to New Hampshire for the second time in less than a week, determined to present himself as a gritty fighter who won't lie down despite his grim poll numbers.
Bush on Wednesday boarded a campaign bus - emblazoned with a new slogan, "Jeb Can Fix It" - for the beginning of a two-day state tour that has all the trappings of scrappy New Hampshire campaigns that have propelled underdog candidates in the past: Freewheeling gab sessions with reporters and voters at town halls and old-fashioned retail politics.
After his first event here - a visit to former Sen. Scott Brown's "No B.S. Backyard Barbeque" - the former frontrunner engaged with reporters on his campaign bus in stripped-down fashion, taking questions for 45 minutes on everything from his unfortunate Colorado debate performance to Ben Carson's family to his slimmed-down frame.
"I'm not skinny," he said. "I'm perfectly sized."
As the Paleo diet devotee snacked on a banana and strips of turkey jerky, Bush continued to brush off questions about Marco Rubio, his onetime protégé in Florida and emergent rival in the Republican race. Bush punted when asked about the long-standing whispers about Rubio's spending habits in Florida - his personal finances and his use of a Florida GOP credit card for personal reasons.
"You can't use party money for personal," Bush said of Rubio's credit card habits. "I have enough on my plate to worry about so I'm not going to spend my time worrying about other people," he added.
When asked about other frontrunners, Bush avoided going negative, only saying that he was not "smart enough to explain the Trump or Carson phenomenon yet."
"Carson is such a nice person," Bush added. "There's a certain appeal there I find soothing. I don't know, I think he's got a life story that's really compelling to people. Proud to be associated with him. We'll see how it plays out."
Bush instead preferred to talk about what he perceives as his strengths at this point in the campaign - his ability to talk at length about a range of issues in settings that give him more breathing room than a debate stage.
"I've got this part down," Bush said of the New Hampshire town hall circuit as his bus rolled to an event in the town of Raymond. "I feel comfortable in settings like that. Where it's give and take. Where there's questions asked. I could probably shorten my answers. I could be more concise. But the so-called debate is more of a performance. It's not a debate like you answer questions. It gives you an opportunity to say whatever you want and I've got to train myself to say what's on my mind and not just answer the questions."
When a reporter followed up, asking Bush if he was answering debate questions "too directly." At the last debate, Bush was one of the few candidates who answered the question about his biggest weakness, telling moderators "I am by my nature impatient." On whether he should give up "actually giving answers to questions being asked," Bush said, "Yeah, I have to stop doing that."
It was an admission of sorts from Bush, a cerebral policy wonk, that he might have to adapt to the Twitter-driven politics of 2015 and get better at delivering the kind of sound bites that have propelled Republican opponents like Rubio, Donald Trump and Chris Christie.
It's not all sound bites, though. Bush also recently admitted in an interview with "Meet the Press" that he has to get better at "chang[ing] the whole conversation" on stage, so that if he's asked a question he considers to be frivolous -- like the one on fantasy football in the third debate -- that he gets to the more important issues, as Chris Christie did in that exchange.
So as he rode on a campaign bus cruising around New Hampshire in search of a comeback, Bush considered his own variations on the McCain "straight talk" campaign model, one which has said he's emulating.
He hesitated to make a direct comparison to the man who won the 2000 and 2008 New Hampshire primaries on hard work, his truth-telling style, and sheer persistence.
"I don't know this bus -- this bus is a little fancy," when asked if he was aiming to reprise the McCain resurgence of 2008, when the presumptive nominee was left for dead before coming back in the final month of the primary race. "I admire John McCain. He's different from me. I've got to go win this my own way. But certainly his record of accomplishment --the guy is extraordinary. He came back and he won, so it's a good model if you want to win."