When Jeb Bush joined LinkedIn for the first time last week, the jokes came easily.
The former Florida governor was, of course, not previously a member of the site. Who needs professional networking when you’re trying to become the third President Bush?
But Bush didn’t just create a profile. He used LinkedIn to publish a 560-word love letter to the culture of “disruption” in Silicon Valley, timed to coincide with a visit to San Francisco, where he hailed an Uber and collected a souvenir hoodie.
“Big government liberals fundamentally can’t embrace digital innovation because it threatens the way they govern,” Bush wrote in a post that drew more than 800 user comments. “Regulation is all they know and they’ve been using the same playbook for decades.”
Bush still has an uphill battle to portray himself as the tech industry’s natural ally against Hillary Clinton. (Tech industry bigwigs are already lining up behind Clinton, and it will take more than a LinkedIn post for a Republican candidate to lure them). But the episode revealed an interesting expansion of LinkedIn’s mission.
Read more: LinkedIn tries to become destination for candidates, voters – The Washington Post