Posted on 02/06/2011 9:37:34 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
John J. Miller has a cover story in the new issue of National Review that’s a compelling portrait of the accomplishments of Jeb Bush. Four years after leaving the Florida governor’s mansion, he remains one of the most impressive Republican politicians in the country, a formidable policy mind with the political chops to drive conservative reforms even out of office. So why isn’t he running for president? Bush told Miller what he’s said to others, too — he won’t run in 2012, but he’ll consider 2016. This is a mistake. Bush should run now for at least eight reasons:
1) It’s a wide-open field for a nomination that’s worth having. Rarely do you get such a convergence of a beatable incumbent president with a wide-open field to challenge him. Obama is slightly below 50 percent in the polls, with a real weakness in the middle of the country, and he’s saddled with a recovery that has yet to produce substantial job growth. Yet there is no true frontrunner in the race to challenge him. It’s hard to imagine an environment better suited for a heavyweight like Jeb to make a run.
2) 2016 is too late I. By 2016, Jeb will have been out of office ten years. No doubt he will have made many contributions to the cause in the interim, but by then his main credential — his governorship and its accomplishments — will seem like yesterday’s news. Right now he has the feel of an elder statesman of the party while his time in office is still fresh.
3) 2016 is too late II. By 2016, a bumper crop of Republican talent will be poised to storm the national stage. Marco Rubio not only will be the hot new thing out of Florida, he’ll be seasoned. Chris Christie will be ready. A host of senators and governors — freshly minted in the 2010 elections, so it’s too soon for them to run now — will be ready to go. Jeb will not be such a predominant figure in such a robust field. The crop of prospective GOP candidates this time reflects the downdraft in Republican fortunes in 2006 and 2008. Jeb would loom all the larger for it.
4) The Bush rehabilitation has begun. George W. Bush is not exactly popular, but two years of Obama have taken the edge off W.-hatred, and he’s risen from the depths of his unpopularity near the end of his presidency. Gallup had a poll in December that had Bush’s approval rating very slightly above President Obama’s. Bush’s book, Decision Points, and the accompanying media tour were successes. In 2008, Jeb’s association with his brother would have been an absolute killer. That’s not true anymore. The controversies that made the Bush years so venomous have faded, and — partly through the miracle of the accelerated news cycle — 2000–2008 already feels somewhat distant.
5) Jeb will still be a Bush in 2016. There’s no doubt that it will always be awkward for Jeb to be the third Bush; it will always have a dynastic feel about it. But that will remain as true in 2016. If Jeb runs in four years, after Obama presumably wins a second term in 2012, he will still be vying to be the third Republican president in a row who’s a Bush. Waiting until 2016 won’t make that fact any less odd.
6) He’s not just another Bush. Jeb is different from his patrician dad and different from his thoroughly Texan brother. As soon as people see him on the national stage, they’ll realize he’s his own person and has to be taken on his own terms.
7) Jeb can unite the party. Jeb probably has a better chance to unite the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP than anyone else, certainly a better chance than Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney would seem to have at this juncture. The establishment would presumably flock to Jeb, while he’d have a record of solid conservative accomplishment to sell to the conservative base. Some tea partiers will have zero interest in another Bush, and Jeb will take his lumps on immigration (at NR, we’ll look forward to administering some of them, and trying to change his mind). It’s a very volatile environment, and were he to run, much would obviously depend on how he actually campaigned. But he would stand a good chance of avoiding a damaging division in the party.
8) Waiting is almost always a mistake. It’s an axiom of presidential politics that you have to run when you have the opening, even if it seems “too soon.” This is why Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were elected president and Mario Cuomo never was. Jeb’s opening is now — “too soon” after his brother’s presidency, “too soon” into his life as an ex-governor — and it will probably never quite be there again.
In short, if Jeb feels a call to run for president, it has to be 2012, not 2016.
Well said!
“Didn’t we fight a revolution to rid ourselves of monarchy? Just what we need.. another Bush RINO. Then what? Hillary?”
Chelsea
“Enough already!”
Indeed!
They know this of course and why they are pushing for Palin not to run. If she runs and wins the Bush family loses power for years....yet that threat is still not big enough to get Jeb to run because the risk of him running and losing in a landslide in the primaries is much bigger and could destroy the Bush family for all time.
More evidence of the decline of NR since Buckley died. There is no way any respectable Conservative can look at open borders Bush and think he is a good thing.
Urk! Need brainscrub to remove that image!
NOOOOO!
Jeb is married to a native of Mexico (the daughter of a migrant worker) and his nieces and nephews are mixed blood. And before you scream “ethnocentric bigot” at me, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But that fact — and items 1 and 2 – DO predispose him to a warm and fuzzy feeling for folks from south of the Rio Grande.
And if — in some strange and metastasizing American desire for a new royal family dynasty — Jeb or his son should win the White House in some future presidential beauty contest designed to divert the American electorate every four years, I’d bet that HIS activities toward this alien invasion will make W’s look like an isolationist.
Any vestige of European culture — the culture MY great-grandparents and probably yours brought here after standing in line at places like Ellis Island, being interrogated, deloused and recorded — will be a distant memory – IF it’s remembered at all.
Jeb comes from another Southern state. If he was the nominee, he’d carry the South. And the Midwest and Mountain West states. And he doesn’t grate people like his Texas brother. We haven’t seen the end of the Bushes in national politics yet.
Lots of posters here would rather see Obama re-elected than see Jeb win the White House.
Thank you Reverend Jackson.
carry the South? the bush name is mud in the south.
Too bad the Bushes and Kennedys didn’t intermarry. Then we could have a two-family system instead of a two-party system. The same Progressive policies either way.
WE WANT OBAMA OUT!!!
Do you think Terri Schiavo will be voting for him?
Jeb would also make the GOp defend their policies over the last 22 years. Which are terrible. Defend NAFTA, WTO, new world order, open borders, outsourcing, no child left behind, privatizing Social security, the Iraq war, the Afgan war, homeland security, gitmo, patriot act, and on and on and on.
the only type og rep that can win in 2012 is someone that does not have any ties to Bush or his polices. Obama wants the gop candidate to have to defend Bush's policies he doesn't want to have defend his own.
An outsider that can point to thier disagreement with Bush and Obama and call for a new path or a return to an old path like Reaganism.
this is why the midterms worked. The gop did not run on Bush's policies. Thanks to the TEA party and people like Gov Palin the theme for 2010 was more Reaganism less Bush.
Jeb will lose in a landslide to Obama. Because Jeb will be seen and Geroge W and George HW Bush no matter who and what his polices are.
I believe she’s rather cold on the idea.
“Jeb comes from another Southern state. If he was the nominee, he’d carry the South.”
I have to disagree with you there. I think his regional traction would be more along the East coast than along the South. I think Huckabee would beat him in most of the South, and I am not impressed with Huckabee strength either.
I do agree that we are not done with the Bush family’s political involvement yet. We still get the occasional boozy belch from the Kennedys, after all. But we do get closer each and every day.
No. No. No. Bush stood by sucking his thumbs while Terri Schiavo was murdered. He couldn’t find the courage to save her life.
Rich is just following his orders from his bosses in the Bilderberger Group.
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