Travis: No, Mama!

Katie: There's no hope for him now, Travis. He's suffering. You know we've got to do it.

Travis: Yes, Mama. But he was my dog. I'll do it.

–Old Yeller (1957)

It's your campaign, Jeb (!) Only you can do it, Jeb (!) Take it out back, tie it to a tree and, you know…Do it quick, Jeb (!), before you have a chance to think on it.

Just in time for the holidays, the ad buys for the New Hampshire primary are starting to infest the Boston television market.

(In fact, the only time any of us in the Commonwealth—God save it!—ever watched WMUR in Manchester was during the Christmas season, when they had Santa Claus on every day. He had an elf named Tom-Tom who always was getting into trouble. Tom-Tom cracked my Dad up, for reasons I never understood. Conclusion of the foregoing childhood reminiscence. We continue.)

Marco Rubio's commercials talk about how he beat down the "Republican establishment" in Florida to win the job in the Senate that he has come to loathe. (These ads are now more than a little ironic, since Rubio is currently supposed to be "the establishment choice" for the nomination.) But Jeb (!) is running commercials that his poll numbers just about everywhere render into sad exercises in wounded fantasy. Here's Jeb (!), butching it up at The Citadel, talking about the "war for our time," which sounds like a slogan you'd use to sell a new style of watch. It is a sorry spectacle of tattered ambition. The ads pitching Jeb (!) are more rueful even than that Miller High Life ad with the sleigh.

Of course, Jeb (!) has been peddling this stuff on the stump, too. America needs a "wartime president," says Jeb (!), apparently forgetting a) that he's not Michael Corleone, and b) that his brother used to say that right before he screwed everything up. Is Jeb (!) a "wartime president"? Based on what, exactly? He didn't even get a no-show job with the Texas Air National Guard (allegedly!) to put on his resume.

To be completely fair, no candidate was less suited to the carnival of souls that this campaign has become than was Jeb (!). He had lots of money, and lots of influential friends, and he even had a mainly undeserved reputation as a Republican with the ability to reach out to minorities. Then, two things happened. He ran facefirst into I, Trump, who found in Jeb (!) the perfect foil—humorless, stuffy, and very easily pantsed on stage. Nobody could have anticipated how truly deformed one man could make our politics. But, for all that, Jeb (!) has proven to be an absolute lemon of a candidate. He has entirely different—but no less serious—problems with English than his brother did. He couldn't find spontaneity if you gave him the ghost of Robin Williams as a guide. And, let us never forget that The Base has decided that his surname is a curse unto 10 generations, and Jeb (!) is nowhere near the pol to turn all that around in one election cycle. Rubio is younger. Cruz is more conservative. Fiorina is a bigger prevaricator. Ben Carson is crazier. Rand Paul is quirkier. And He, Trump is more, well, everything. Even if you put him at the top of the Single Digit Club, where's the room for Jeb (!) to run in a Republican primary field?

It's not your year, big fella. Just admit it. Don't go to Vegas next week and stand up there and get your trou' dropped on you again. (I mean, Jesus H. Christ on a package tour of the Balkans, Rubio embarrassed you last time.) Maintain some dignity. Take the campaign out behind the shed and come back alone. There's no hope for it now. It's suffering, Jeb (!), and only you can do it.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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