In presidential elections, Republicans face an uphill battle. Changing demographics mean that, over time, fewer Americans are identifying with the party. To win the White House, the Republicans need a candidate who appears centrist enough to pull in independents and conservative Democrats. At conservative events in non-election years, party insiders study and groom potential candidates. Their choice this time is John Ellis Bush, whose name is often abbreviated to “Jeb”.
To party insiders and most of the media, Bush appears to have plenty of crossover potential: he was governor of Florida, a critical state in elections since 2000; he speaks Spanish fluently and is married to an immigrant. His public appearances in 2015, however, have been a nonstop series of gaffes and 180-degree turns. “Jeb” says he is his own man, but 17 of the 21 people advising him on foreign policy worked for his brother, George W. Bush, and several of them were key architects of the Iraq War. The job is being offered to Bush — but judging by his body language, it’s not clear whether he really wants it.
John Ellis Bush speaks in Barrington, New Hampshire, August 7, 2015. Photo: Michael Vadon (CC2.0)
John Ellis Bush
Stated priorities: war against the Islamic State; war against the remains of Syria; restoring the government’s power to spy on Americans; removing energy subsidies; banning members of Congress from becoming lobbyists
Current age: 62
Age on election day: 63Career path: real-estate developer, businessman, governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, then private-equity consultant
Marriages: 1
Children: 3
Religion: Roman Catholic
Religious fervor: **
Campaign funds: $$$$$
Skeletons in closet: ***
Clown factor: **
Cuckoo factor: *
Ability to stretch the truth: **
Distinguishing features: unusual height; vacant expression
Best resembles: a deer caught in the headlights
Gimmicky product: a $75 plastic bowl for making guacamole, one of his favorite snacks
Campaign video
Why they won’t elect him
Bush’s last name comes with a lot of political baggage. He says his father is “the greatest man alive”, and his brother was “a great president”. Like his brother, Bush refers to America’s adversaries as “evildoers”, calls America “the homeland”, and mispronounces the word “nuclear”.
In 2000, Bush revoked the voter registration of 80,000 African-Americans in Florida, who as a demographic typically vote Democratic. A difference of 537 votes was enough for the US Supreme Court to decide the election in favor of Bush’s brother.
After the 2004 election, Bush wrote a letter to a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, thanking them for falsely accusing his brother’s opponent, John Kerry, of not having earned his medals for heroism in the Vietnam War.
Bush admits to having smoked marijuana in prep school, but is now emphatic that the federal government must enforce the federal ban on the drug even in states where it is legal. While governor, Bush represented a party supposedly against government interference in people’s lives, yet he intervened in the highly politicized case of a brain-dead woman who had been kept alive artificially for years.
In August 2007, Bush was hired as a private-equity consultant to Lehman Brothers. When that company went bankrupt a year later, Barclay’s bought it and kept Bush on at $2 million a year.
“People need to work longer hours,” Bush said, meaning something different
Bush gets into trouble when he goes off script, necessitating that he often correct or amend previous remarks. His positions on the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the causes of climate change have gone back and forth. Intending to say that more people need to be fully employed, he instead said, “People need to work longer hours,” and a discussion of funding for women’s health clinics produced the statement: “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”
Why they might
With so many of the Republican candidates demonizing Central American immigrants, Bush instead embraces multiculturalism. “We are very Hispanic in the sense that we speak Spanish at home,” he says. “We eat Mexican food at home.” Bush and his wife met as teenagers in her village in Mexico, where Bush was on a youth program.
As governor, Bush kept costs under control and reformed the educational system
As governor, Bush frequently vetoed provisions in the Florida budget, keeping costs under control. He eliminated 11 percent of jobs in the state government, and implemented a conservative-friendly reform of the state’s educational system. Bush remains a proponent of giving parents vouchers to send their children to private schools.
With the support of the party establishment, Bush was able to raise more than $100 million from a handful of donors in a very short time. This will fund enormous amounts of advertising and a much larger campaign staff than his opponents are able to muster.
People’s memories are short, and Bush has changed position often enough during the current campaign that people with very different views will be able to hear whatever they want to hear.
As for his foreign policy, well, the third time’s the charm.
In his own words
“The United States plays a constructive role in the world by being the ally of our friends, where they know that we have their back, and having our enemies fear us a little bit. That’s how you create a more peaceful world. When you pull back, voids are filled; and sadly today, we have a void that has been filled: a caliphate [of a] size larger than Iowa. … If I’m president, we will have a strategy on day one to take out this grave threat to our national security and to the world; I promise you that.”
Best quote about him
“It’s an easy line to say: ‘Haven’t we had enough Bushes?’ After all, even my mother said, ‘Yes.’ … So I said to Jeb, ‘Hang in there. You can do the job.’” (George W. Bush, April 2015)
Official website
