Jeb Bush, the "smart" one, announced this morning in a tweet and a Facebook post that he is probably running for president in an election that's 693 days from now, and definitely forming a PAC through which you can give him money if you like the idea of him running for president.

"I am excited to announce I will actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States," the land profiteer-turned-governor-turned-charter-school profiteer tweeted. Speaking of which, remember when Jeb's son George P. actively explored the possibility of breaking into his ex-girlfriend's bedroom in the middle of the night, according to a Miami-Dade police report from that night, just after Jeb lost his first bid for Florida governor? Those were the days.

Jeb is busying himself with the January birthing of "a Leadership PAC" that may be the real point of all this, a soft-money coffer that lets him influence the tenor of GOP politics, even if he doesn't actually run for office himself. The overpaid Beltway writerly class is busying itself with pats on its own back for amazing, oddball prognostications of a Bush-Clinton 2016 matchup months, even years ago, because who could have seen that coming?

In the meantime, if he really is going to run for president, Bush has to convince Republicans to shy away from the divisive social politics and populist demagoguery to opt for a traditionally conservative Ivy League businessman with family ties to politics. Which would be a real break with recent history for the party, if you don't count 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, and 2012.