When asked to pinpoint where Jeb Bush’s presidential effort began running into trouble, many confidants utter a single word: Dallas. 
 
 Mike Murphy, Bush’s political alter ego, decided early on to hold regular senior staff meetings at an unusual location: a Hyatt hotel inside a terminal at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The idea was that it was a central and relatively inexpensive gathering place for a team scattered from Los Angeles, where Murphy lives, to Miami, where the would-be candidate resides. 
 
 It went fine at first but quickly became an awkward routine. Donors and other Republicans found the setup ungainly for a campaign-in-waiting that was supposed to be based in Florida. 
 
 Older Bush hands also grew unhappy with rapid hiring by new advisers, and relationships frayed, according to Bush associates. And as the former Florida governor began to founder on the trail and in the polls, the discussions flared into arguments about how to divvy up money and resources between Bush’s allied super PAC and his official campaign. 
 
 “These things are always tug of wars,” Thomas D. Rath, a Bush family friend in New Hampshire, said of the initial sessions. “It’s almost like the first day of school, everyone trying to get to the right place and find the right seats.” 
 
 In a speech delivered in Berlin during a three country European tour aimed at promoting his foreign policy credentials, probable U.S. presidential candidate Jeb Bush also addressed campaign “shake-ups.” (Reuters) 
 
 The airport huddles were just one sign among many of a political operation going off course — disjointed in message and approach, torn between factions and more haphazard than it appeared on the surface. Bush’s first six months as an all-but-declared candidate have been defined by a series of miscalculations, leaving his standing considerably diminished ahead of his formal entry into the race on Monday. 
 
 [Debrief: For Jeb Bush, the challenge is making it about ‘Jeb,’ not ‘Bush’] 
 
 In interviews this week, dozens of Bush backers and informed Republicans — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to comment candidly — described an overly optimistic, even haughty exploratory operation. Strategic errors were exacerbated by unexpected stumbles by the would-be candidate and internal strife within his team, culminating in a staff shake-up this week. 
 
 The original premise of Bush’s candidacy — that a bold, fast start would scare off potential rivals and help him overcome the burden of his last name — has proved to be misguided. 
 
 His operation’s ability to rake in large checks also fueled inflated expectations. Supporters acknowledged this week that an allied super PAC was likely to fall short — perhaps substantially — of predictions that it would bring in $100 million in the first half of the year. 
 
 On the stump, Bush has stuck to his pledge not to shift to the right to win the nomination, but his middle-of-the-road positions on immigration and education have come off more as out of step with the base of his party than shrewdly pragmatic. His wonky question-and-answer exchanges with voters sometimes resemble college lectures rather than a disarming appeal for votes. 
 
 The troubles have eroded the image Bush has sought to present as the one Republican uniquely ready for the presidential stage. He has slipped in polls from presumed front-runner to one of several candidates jumbled toward the top of an increasingly crowded field. 
 
 “We’ve learned that the prospect of a big financial advantage is not going to keep people out of the race and that the notion of a new face is stronger than we might have thought,” Vin Weber, an outside Bush adviser, said in an interview. “That requires modest adjustments in strategy, not wholesale changes.” 
 
 [Jeb Bush shakes up team ahead of campaign launch] 
 
 After weeks of bad press, “donors were getting a little edgy,” Weber said. “No one is ready to jump ship. Nobody has lost heart. But they have watched other candidates rise in the polls.” 
 
 Speaking Wednesday in Berlin during an overseas trip, Bush expressed confidence. “It’s June, for crying out loud, so we’ve got a long way to go,” he said, adding later: “I’m going to compete everywhere. If I’m a candidate, there’s no fifth-place, you know, kind of mentality in my mind.” 
 
 Forced to make up lost ground, Bush, his aides and his super-PAC allies are now preparing plans to attack the records and experience of his GOP competition, especially Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. A summer envisioned as a season of slow and warm introductions to voters is poised to be a battle as Bush tries to recapture his place atop the pack. 
 
 “The Bushes have always underestimated the depth of the base’s dissatisfaction with their policies, and they take the criticism personally,” Laura Ingraham, a conservative radio host, said in an interview. “Jeb has to try to understand the reasons why conservatives have problems with him instead of crowing about how principled he is.” 
 
 Aides bristle at what they consider the media’s relentless focus on Bush’s personal and professional past. They say that out on the campaign trail, in visits to more than a dozen states, he has been doing exactly what he should. 
 
 “Interacting with people on the road who deal with real issues . . . that’s what brings true joy to Jeb,” Sally Bradshaw, a longtime consultant, said in a recent e-mail. 
 
 Bush started with an aggressive series of steps late last year and early this year — a kind of “shock and awe” entry that caught fellow contenders by surprise. The moves were designed to send an unambiguous cue to fundraisers and party activists and to re­inforce a natural advantage Bush had with establishment donors. 
 
 [Earlier: Awash in cash, Bush asks donors not to give more than $1 million] 
 
 At the same time, Bush’s inner circle operated on the theory that there was little that could be gained by trying to speed up the political clock and that most voters in early states would not begin paying attention until later in the year. 
 
 Bush revived a 650-member alumni network of aides who worked for him as governor, and he recruited 21 veterans of his father’s and brother’s administrations to advise him on foreign policy. He hired state directors in the first four early states, aides for outreach to evangelical Christians and Hispanics, and a spokeswoman dedicated to fielding questions from the Spanish-language press. 
 
 As Bush travels the country, he has fielded more than 900 questions from donors, reporters and voters, according to aides. He has maintained a busy schedule that stretches from the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — where conservative Republicans remain skeptical — to places visited less frequently at this early stage by presidential candidates, including Denver, Seattle and Puerto Rico. 
 
 Despite those efforts, some recent surveys put Bush in a five-way tie for the lead. Recent polls touted by his advisers give him a wide lead in New Hampshire, while others taken nationally and in the early states put him behind Rubio and Walker. 
 
 [Post-ABC poll: Bush lead evaporates in unsettled GOP race] 
 
 Sensing Bush’s vulnerabilities, Ohio Gov. John Kasich this week hired two experienced GOP operatives as he prepares to jump into the contest and make a play for the same donors Bush has already wooed. 
 
 “I didn’t think I was going to be back up here again, because frankly I thought Jeb was just going to suck all the air out of the room, and it just hasn’t happened,” Kasich told New Hampshire business leaders last week. 
 
 Bush dispatched one possible adversary early when Mitt Romney decided not to run again. His vigorous entrance also bruised the chances of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is still pondering a bid. They did not regard Rubio as a likely opponent, thinking he would decide against challenging his onetime mentor, but were proved wrong when the young, telegenic Cuban American jumped in the race. 
 
 Early on, there were indications that Bush’s ability to command huge amounts of cash for his allied Right to Rise super PAC was emerging as the dominant characteristic of his potential candidacy. His team laid out presidential-style goals for fundraisers, asking them to pull in $50,000, $100,000, $250,000 or $500,000 by April 17. The money was flowing into the super PAC so briskly that his advisers issued an edict — no contributions of more than $1 million, for now. 
 
 “He was more of a super-PAC candidate than a retail candidate,” said one Republican close to the Bush operation. “. . . When was the last time he’s asked anyone for a vote? It’s been quite a few years.” 
 
 Those concerns, simmering under the surface, finally boiled over one week in mid-May with a series of interviews focused on the most obvious issue imaginable for a Bush: the Iraq war. 
 
 [On Iraq question, Jeb Bush stumbles and GOP rivals pounce] 
 
 Starting with an interview aired on Fox News on Monday, May 11, Bush struggled over four days to answer whether he would have authorized the war begun by his brother given what is known now about faulty intelligence. He first said yes, then said “maybe,” then refused to answer altogether. 
 
 Finally, that Thursday, he attempted to settle the issue at a campaign-style event in Arizona. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “If we’re all supposed to answer hypothetical questions — knowing what we know now, what would you have done — I would have not engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq.” 
 
 The episode served to crystallize some of the key concerns about Bush — his reluctance to criticize or distance himself from the unpopular policies of George W. Bush, and his tendency toward prickliness if pushed. 
 
 “We should have had that answer nailed down,” one donor said. “There were people who were really shaken by that.” 
 
 By the time major party donors gathered in Dallas in late May for a meeting of the Republican Governors Association’s executive roundtable, the overwhelming sentiment, according to several participants, was that Jeb Bush was less formidable than many thought he was going to be. Some flatly stated that they did not believe he could win the nomination. 
 
 People close to Bush started getting anxious, according to a top party fundraiser with close ties to his advisers — and things began to deteriorate inside the Bush camp. 
 
 David Kochel, an Iowa-based strategist and former Romney aide, had been brought aboard in January as a de facto campaign manager. As the months wore on, Bradshaw and Murphy became jittery about Kochel’s concentration on staffing issues rather than deflecting the shots being thrown Bush’s way. 
 
 Meanwhile, Bush was growing chummy with Danny Diaz, a 39-year-old Washington native and onetime plumber, who was spotted several times on the road with Bush while Kochel ground away at headquarters near the Miami airport. 
 
 By late May, Kochel’s grip on power had eroded. Bradshaw and Murphy moved with the candidate’s blessing to push Kochel into a lesser role and ensure they alone had final say about the allocation of funds. The candidate, urged on by his allies and donors, suggested that a more assertive tack was necessary. 
 
 On Monday, as Bush prepared to leave for Europe, Diaz was named the campaign manager. 
 
 Friends and donors are hopeful that Bush has corrected course and that his cash-flush political committees will carry him further than other candidates. 
 
 “He’s going to try to do it his way without acting with every change in the wind, without doing full face-plants on the pandering,” said Tallahassee lobbyist John “Mac” Stipanovich, a Bush ally. 
 
 Dan Balz, Scott Clement, Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Philip Rucker in Washington and Karen Tumulty in Berlin contributed to this report. ||||| Jeb Bush's campaign, searching for momentum in a race that hasn’t gone its way, is deploying nearly all of its staff in its Miami headquarters to early states and shifting millions of dollars in TV ad reservations. 
 
 On a Wednesday afternoon staff-wide conference call, top campaign officials, including campaign manager Danny Diaz, informed employees that the deployment would be staggered throughout the month of January. The campaign is expected to dispatch between 50 and 60 staffers in Miami and elsewhere, with 20 going to New Hampshire and 10 or more going to Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada. 
 
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 One participant on the call quoted Diaz as saying that “damn near everybody” would be departing Miami for early primary states. Diaz, too, would be getting deployed, he told the staff. 
 
 The campaign also said it was making major adjustments in its TV spending, canceling $3 million in reservations and directing it to field efforts and voter contact. It will scrap over $1 million of TV spending in Iowa, a state that he’s been trailing in, and around $2 million in South Carolina. 
 
 “We’re making a strategic resource reallocation,” said Tim Miller, a Bush spokesman. 
 
 Late Wednesday afternoon, Bush, along with Diaz and top campaign fundraiser Heather Larrison, held a conference call with top donors and bundlers to explain the staff redeployment and to provide a general update on the campaign. 
 
 Bush fielded several questions and gave an upbeat assessment of the campaign's fundraising performance in the fourth quarter of 2015, which will end on Thursday —though he did not provide an exact figure of how much he had raised. 
 
 Political observers will be looking closely at Bush's cash on hand when the campaign files its required reports toward the end of January. 
 
 The strategic shakeup comes as Bush is mounting a major push in New Hampshire, which his advisers consider a must-win state. The former Florida governor, once the frontrunner of the unwieldy GOP field, is making a last-ditch effort to right a campaign that has faltered despite a hefty cash pile and an establishment pedigree. 
 
 Wednesday’s announcement marked the Bush campaign’s third major overhaul. In June, the organization surprised the political world when it said that Diaz, a hard-charging veteran operative, would serve as its manager instead of David Kochel, an Iowa-based strategist who had long been seen as the likely occupant of the post. Then, in October, beset by lagging poll numbers and mediocre fundraising, the campaign announced that it was slashing staff salaries and firing a number of consultants. 
 
 The latest decisions reflect a calculation on Bush’s part that, in a presidential campaign defined by loud voices and wall-to-wall media coverage, TV commercials are having less of an effect than they traditionally do. While Bush has benefited from more TV spending than any other candidate, his poll numbers nationally and in early primary states have disappointed. 
 
 Advisers said that money would be redirected to a variety of activities in key primary states. Much of it will go towards increasing its staff presence in Iowa, where the campaign currently counts 11 paid staffers, in New Hampshire, where it has 20, South Carolina, where it has seven, and Nevada, where it has nine. 
 
 Aside from increasing its spending on field efforts, the campaign said it would boost its spending on radio advertising in New Hampshire and South Carolina — including on conservative talk shows. 
 
 For its TV presence, the campaign will find itself increasingly reliant on Right to Rise, the super PAC that has been airing tens of millions of dollars in advertisements on Bush’s behalf. The group, which operates independently of the campaign, has reserved advertising time in all four early states. 
 
 A Right to Rise spokesman, Paul Lindsay, said Wednesday afternoon that the super PAC would be “evaluating progress on the ground and augmenting our TV buys in early states where we see a need.” 
 
 The Bush campaign is also seeking out volunteers — including alumni of the George W. Bush administration. On Tuesday, Brian McCormack, a former staffer in the George W. Bush White House who now works at the Washington, DC-based Edison Electric Institute, sent out an email to Bush administration alum asking them to help out Jeb Bush’s early state efforts. 
 
 “The political season is about to shift into high gear which means it’s time to make your plans to visit Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and/or Nevada!” McCormack wrote. “What could be a better resolution for 2016 than working to put a Republican in the White House?” 
 
 Authors:
– Jeb Bush has not yet announced his presidential candidacy, but some critics contend that his campaign is already struggling—and in a front-page piece, the Washington Post delves into why that might be. One of the first blunders may have been allowing his political consultant, Mike Murphy, to hold senior staff meetings in a hotel inside the Dallas/Fort Worth airport—odd for an almost-campaign that's technically based in Florida. The awkwardness that created is just one example of the splintered nature of the upcoming campaign: There have been conflicts, for instance, between longstanding staffers and newer ones, and disagreements over dividing funding between Bush’s super PAC and the campaign itself. “These things are always tug of wars,” Bush ally Thomas D. Rath says. “It’s almost like the first day of school, everyone trying to get to the right place and find the right seats.” The first day of school may have been more like musical chairs, as Republican Party strategist Danny Diaz was named campaign manager earlier this week over the more expected choice—David Kochel. The selection of Diaz just a week before Bush declares his candidacy Monday is evidence that his team is still working out serious kinks, write Ed O'Keefe and Robert Costa; their piece traces Bush's other apparent problems, including shortfalls in both fundraising and the polls, and of course, that Iraq blunder. "In interviews this week, dozens of Bush backers and informed Republicans ... described an overly optimistic, even haughty exploratory operation," they write. "Strategic errors were exacerbated by unexpected stumbles by the would-be candidate and internal strife within his team." As for Bush, he appears unconcerned. “It’s June, for crying out loud, so we’ve got a long way to go,” Bush said of the staffing swap at a news conference yesterday, per the New York Times. “I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this.”