Trump spectacle may be boost to Bush campaign

The most important question of the moment, as the Republican Party prepares for the first of 1,162 or so presidential primary debates, isn’t really what Donald Trump will say or do on stage.

OK, that might be the most immediately interesting question, and the best reason for people who aren’t professionally required to watch every single GOP debate to tune in Thursday night.

But what matters most, politically, about the “I Am Trump” spectacle isn’t what The Donald does but whom he helps. Trump won’t be the nominee, but the one who is may end up owing him a debt of gratitude for services rendered.

For now, it’s easiest to see who will owe Trump their resentment, since just about every darkhorse candidate has been effectively bigfooted by The Donald. (When George Pataki writes his memoir, “I Could Have Been a Contender,” it will mostly consist of complaints about how the wrong 6-foot-plus New Yorker got all the media attention in the summer of ’15.)

But among Trump’s potential beneficiaries, the man most likely to be indebted is Jeb Bush. A few months ago, Jeb looked like the weakest of front-runners: The field was deep, his poll numbers were lackluster, and he was facing two candidates — Marco Rubio and Scott Walker — who seemed just as capable of uniting the party.

Walker, Rubio and Jeb’s weaknesses remain. But Trump has come bearing several gifts.

First, his sudden prominence sets up exactly the kind of stylistic contrast that Jeb needed: He and The Donald are now the two most famous names in the race, they’re occupying opposing poles (populist/establishment, raffish/ respectable) in a way that makes Jeb look like the safest harbor for anyone freaked out by Trump.

At the same time, Trump’s deliberately outrageous shtick provides cover for Jeb to run the kind of campaign he clearly wants to run — conceding a human role in climate change here, doing minority outreach there — without having controversy dogging his every centrist foray.

Jeb doesn’t need the media spotlight right now, and there was a real danger that he would become a punching bag for the entire field across the early debates. Now everyone is scrambling to figure out how to handle Trump instead.

Third, Trump has thrust the immigration issue back onto center stage.

So long as his polls hold, it will be Trump who gets to define who’s actually tough on illegal immigration and who isn’t.

Finally, Trump’s prominence may eventually give Jeb a rare chance to actually attack a rival from the right — since The Donald’s relatively liberal past provides plenty of ripe targets. Now the opportunity is there.

Which doesn’t mean that he’ll seize it, or that his non-Trump rivals will flail and fold. Walker’s numbers have held up pretty well; Rubio’s fundamentals are still strong; there’s plenty of time for someone else to emerge, and Jeb is, after all, trailing in national polling at the moment.

But Jeb wasn’t strong a few months ago either; he was always going to need more luck than his brother did in 2000 or Romney did in 2012. And having Trump on the stage this Thursday is the first major sign that he might get it — that fortune, always partial to dynasties, favors the Bushes yet again.