As he recently sought to explain his prior contention that single mothers should be publicly shamed, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush explained that, “To assume you can have a fatherless society and not have bad outcomes, I think, is the wrong approach.”

The former Florida governor contended that out-of-wedlock births presented a “huge challenge for single moms to raise children in the world that we’re in today.”

During a town hall meeting yesterday, Bush declared that “kids” are “aimlessly wandering around in their lives,” in part because they “never really had the kind of mentoring and nurturing that gives them sense that their lives could be better.” As a result of this untethered existence, “You see what happens in Baltimore and Ferguson. You see the tragedies play out,” Bush said in an apparent reference to rioters. “You see the people that become so despondent they take actions that are horrific.”

A two-parent household--or even just two involved parents--would help combat “social ills,” Bush wrote in his 1995 book “Profiles in Character.” These ills presumably include further unwanted pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, and criminal activity.

Bush’s thoughts on rectitude, aimless youth, and parental responsibility, however, might ring hollow considering that his own three children--who grew up with two parents in the house/Governor’s mansion--have all had run-ins with law enforcement.

According to police and court records, Bush’s daughter and two sons have been arrested or investigated for crimes like public intoxication, cocaine possession, resisting arrest, burglary, criminal mischief, and fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance. Cops even caught Bush’s son Jebby--who was 16 at the time--having sex in a Jeep Cherokee at 10 PM on a school night (the car was in a Tallahassee mall parking lot).

But these entanglements have never been the subject of speeches or public ruminations by the former Florida governor, who considers familial rap sheets a personal matter. Instead, Jeb! would rather talk about your aimless kids.

Bush’s three children are pictured above. George P. Bush (who once stalked a college girlfriend) is sandwiched by mug shots of John Ellis "Jebby" Bush, Jr. and Noelle Bush.