This is a really smart anlysis of how Jeb Bush is positioning himself in the buildup to the 2016 presidential election: he's running for "mayor of America."
Unfortunately for Bush, Matthew Yglesias explains, the federal government is not like a local or state government but bigger. It is more like, in Paul Krugman's memorable phrase, an insurance company with an army. Yglesias continues:
The big question in state/local government is how to spend middle class people's money wisely on services that are better provided collectively than on the free market. But the big question in the federal government is how much money to redistribute from the rich/young/healthy to the poor/old/sick. These are totally different questions, and Jeb isn't even bothering to answer the second one....
