Bush Campaign Has Two Tech Problems

Since Jeb Bush began unofficially running for the Republican nomination he has had a couple problems with technology. These are primarily presented as examples of how politicians must be careful, not necessarily criticism of Jeb Bush personally. First there was the problem of old tweets from a campaign aide, such as calling women sluts. The solution was fairly simple, deleting the old tweets and apologizing:

Ethan Czahor’s tweets began disappearing today after news broke that he had been hired by Jeb Bush. A spokesperson for Bush told BuzzFeed News: “Governor Bush believes the comments were inappropriate. They have been deleted at our request. Ethan is a great talent in the tech world and we are very excited to have him on board the Right to Rise PAC.” Czahor also apologized in a tweet on Monday.

Nothing totally disappears from the internet, but old tweets from a campaign aide are not likely to cause any significant problems for Bush, as stories of his own earlier actions might, unless a trend develops. It does serve as a reminder that anything posted on social media can come back to haunt the writer when seeking a job, although in this case it did not prevent the Bush campaign from hiring Czahor.

This was quickly followed by another problem when Bush wanted to give the appearance of transparency by releasing hundreds of thousands of emails sent to him when he was governor of Florida. This was largely show as the press already had copies of the email. Bush ran into a problem when it was reported that the released emails also contain email addresses and Social Security numbers of constituents.

It was certainly a mistake to dump such information but I also suspect that these are problems which any campaign might have faced. In the lists of Bush family errors, this hardly ranks with invading the wrong country following a terrorist attack.  The Wall Street Journal reports that, “he is leaning toward his father’s more pragmatic and restrained philosophy” compared to the philosophy of his brother. Of course George W. Bush also spoke out against nation-building as a candidate.

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