Daughter Noelle was incarcerated for substance abuse yet Jeb 'distanced' himself by not associating at least publicly to the point that when she came up for a parole hearing he dispatched a family associate to represent her while he attended several 'political' dog and pony shows.

His wife "Columbo" was detained for attempting to "smuggle" thirty thousand dollars of goods past customs. Claiming SHE didn't know it needed to be declared.

And let's NOT forget the incident when this black man on a vacation trip in Florida just south of Tallahasse stopped at a roadside bar/resturant for a sandwich and was 'told' he would have to use the 'SIDE' door and sit in the back. HE just "happened" to be a Federal Appeals Court Judge. The flap got BETTER when JEB attempted to defend the proprietor saying that there was a "mis-understanding". In the end the joint was closed down and Jeb attempted to apologize.

His father put out fifty thousand dollars to a Houston firm specializing in digging up dirt on opponents when running against Lawton Chiles for Gov. a race Jeb lost in his first try at Gov.

Rings memories of Lee Atwater/Willie Horton/ Dukakis.

Then there is/was the Schiavo debacle.

And "cronyism" runs all the way to the core of Jeb's administration. Katharine Harris for example.

Jeb's catering to the Religious fanatics need not to be overlooked. In Polk county, just east of Tampa Jeb gave support to the 'local' politicians to allow the local school board to have veto rights over school curriculum and removed sex education OUT of the school system. Within two years teenage pregnancy skyrocketed near thirty percent.

Child abuse in Florida is maybe the worst in the nation. The following is a resume of who Jeb appointed to head the Department of Children and Families for the State of Florida.

Jeb's DCF Choice Seems To Be From Boston, Circa 1620
DANIEL RUTH
Published: Aug 21, 2002

this was the best Jeb Bush could do? Appoint a theological Great Santini to head one of the most controversial agencies in the state?
! couldn't have stepped on his exclamation mark with more oooomph if he had picked Torquemada to take over the Department of Children and Families.

In tapping Jerry Regier for the post, the governor has shown all the due diligence of an Enron auditor.

Really, how tough was this decision?

After pushing DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney out the door because of a series of debacles, the governor had a plethora of potential candidates for the job. The challenge is to restore a modicum of public confidence in a bureaucracy charged with the welfare of the state's abused and neglected children.

For starters, Bush could have asked recognized child advocates such as Jack Levine, who leads the Center for Florida's Children, or Karen Gievers, who heads the Children's Advocacy Foundation. They are literally at his doorstep with a keen understanding of the myriad problems engulfing DCF.

As well, there are countless others across the state and nation whose credentials in the field of child care would commend them for the job in a nonpartisan way.

Instead, Bush stuck his snoot into the well of politics and came up looking like a Tammany Hall hack by naming an old family crony who once associated his name with a fundamentalist manifesto that approves of spanking children to the point where bruises and welts occur.

The tome supports the views that women are second-class citizens to their husbands and that premarital sex, homosexuality and masturbation should be illegal.

Good grief, at that rate virtually the entire state would be locked up for something!

Attention To Detail

The tract goes on to reject the government's right to take children into custody except in the rarest cases of extreme abuse or neglect.

Ahem, isn't that sort of what DCF does?

This was just great.

Jeb Bush had just tapped a guy associated with spanking children until they bruise and welt to head the state agency charged with protecting ABUSED CHILDREN!!!

Wouldn't this be a bit like hiring Bonnie and Clyde to manage the state's pension fund?

Realizing they had begun to look like the Abbott and Costello of child care, Bush and Regier started to distance themselves from the 1989 article published by the Coalition on Revival, which listed Regier as a co- chairman of the organization.

Through his flack, Bush admitted he hadn't known about Regier's link to the piece, although The Miami Herald had found it on the Internet within hours of Regier's appointment.

So much for attention to detail.

Political Welt

For his part, Regier insisted the essay did not reflect his own views, that he was not the actual co-author and that he had no editorial influence on the publication.

Okey-doke. So what happened?

Did someone stick his name on an essay that makes Boston circa 1620 look like a Club Med retreat? Was this merely an example of an evangelical Christian practical joke? Hey! Let's publish an essay promoting a view of the family, children and women that portrays us as a bunch of narrow- minded yahoos - and stick Jerry's name on it. What a hoot!''

There was even some dispute as to when Regier parted ways with the Coalition on Revival. Regier has said he left about 1989, when he realized these people were even more extreme than he was in interpreting the Bible as a sort of Hair Shirt Club for Men.

But a Coalition on Revival official told the Herald that Regier didn't disassociate himself until about 1995, and only then because he was taking a government job in Oklahoma, not for any particular religious disagreement.

In the end, this episode says more about Bush's judgment than it does about Regier's views on Dickensian corporal punishment of children.

Faced with the most explosive controversy of his administration, when a decision called for deliberate thoughtfulness, the governor instead opted for political expediency without an extensive vetting of his choice to take over the state's most sensitive agency.

That's a self-inflicted welt on his political keister not soon to heal.

By now I would suppose the picture is clear and your question has been answered.