For Bushworld, this was the election where the Cain and Abel drama of W. and Jeb would finally have a happy ending.

I covered the Jeb and Junior sibling smashdown from the start. In 1993, I went on the road to watch Jeb run for governor in Florida and W. run for governor in Texas.

Barbara had blurted out to W. that he shouldn’t run because he couldn’t win. And when I talked to Jeb, he seemed annoyed that his older brother had jumped into the race in Texas because it turned it into “a People magazine story.”

But W. had spent his rowdy 20s and 30s living with the unpleasant fact that even though he was the oldest, his parents assumed Jeb had the bright political future. At 47, with his drinking days behind him and Laura beside him, he was ready to cash in on the family name and money and make his move.

It was soon clear to me that the Good Son was not as scintillating a campaigner as the Prodigal Son. W. didn’t know the issues and he had a spiteful side, but he was the one with the crackle.

When Jeb came up with a line on the trail in Florida that worked, W. just swiped it. When Jeb said, “I am running for governor not because I am George and Barbara Bush’s son; I am running because I am George P. and Noelle and Jeb’s father,” W. began saying: “I am not running for governor because I am George Bush’s son. I am running because I am Jenna and Barbara’s father.” Karl Rove laughed about the shoplifting.

Jeb was the image of his mother, especially when he smiled, but his pragmatic political temperament was more like his father’s, even though he never had his dad’s manic “ants on a hot pan” energy. W. looked like his father but got his acerbic streak from his mother.