Unlike some of his potential Republican presidential rivals, Jeb Bush looks like he’s about to wrap up a trip overseas with a boost from the news media.
Bush set out Tuesday to tour three countries in Europe — Germany, Poland and Estonia — to burnish his foreign policy credentials. The trip wraps up on Saturday and unlike Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who took their own policy trips abroad, news coverage for Bush has either been favorable or largely uncritical.
“Mr. Bush seemed at ease here on a global stage, cracking a joke about surveillance, a sore point in Germany since it was revealed that the United States had tapped the cellphone of [Chancellor Angela] Merkel,” said a New York Times article on Tuesday. “And he gamely fielded questions from a moderator about environmental sustainability and trade policy.”
“There was no news, no confrontations and, most of all, no gaffes,” wrote Politico on Friday, summing up Bush’s tour.
The Wall Street Journal said Bush’s trip was “All in all, not a bad use of [his] time heading into his official campaign announcement on Monday.”
The coverage stands in stark contrast to the press Walker and Christie received earlier this year when they had their own overseas trips. Their junkets were overshadowed by public slip-ups that resulted in both Walker and Christie withdrawing from the national media.
While in London in February, Walker made headlines for declining to answer a moderator’s question about whether he accepts the theory of evolution. “For me, I’m going to punt on that …” he said at the time.
“Walker’s blunder was a testament to just how much scrutiny U.S. elected officials face when they go abroad,” CNN reported.
When Walker took subsequent trips to Israel and Europe again, he held almost no public events and took no questions from the news media.
Christie also went to the United Kingdom in February, where he made a comment (which he later walked back) that seemed to suggest parents should have a choice on whether to vaccinate their children against certain diseases.
Following criticism, Christie canceled three press conference that had been scheduled to take place during his trip. Politico described that week for Christie as a “train wreck.”
