Jeb Bush on Monday made a confident, forceful case for the presidency in a half-hour speech that chided less experienced rivals for the Republican nomination and dismissed President Obama as a “glorified tourist” whose agenda has failed.
The former two-term Florida governor, speaking to a national television audience from a Miami college gymnasium packed with cheering supporters, didn’t stop there. Bush, 62, called presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton a threat to Americans’ religious liberty and, in a clever counter to his opponents, Democrat and Republican, who argue that the country can’t afford a third President Bush, said the White House wasn’t a prize to be passed from one liberal to the next.
“The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a no-change election; to hold onto power. To slog on with the same agenda under another name: That’s our opponents’ call to action this time around. That’s all they’ve got left,” Bush said. “And you and I know that America deserves better.”
“Our country is on a very bad course. And the question is: What are we going to do about it? The question for me is: What am I going to do about it?” Bush continued. “And I have decided. I am a candidate for president of the United States. We will take command of our future once again in this country.”
Bush declared for the presidency after six months of preparing, a period marked by his intense focus on raising money and putting in place a political team for his campaign.
The former governor, who served from 1999 – 2007 and last faced the voters in an election in 2002, becomes the third member of his immediate family to seek the presidency since 1980. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush served as vice president before being elected president in 1988. He served one term, ousted by Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, in 1992. Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas. was elected president in 2000.
Bush’s speech Monday afternoon, delivered in the city he has called home since the early 1980s, was in some respect the culmination of years-long expectations of legions of Bush family allies who saw Jeb as the most equipped to win the presidency and occupy the Oval Office.
The well-choreographed launch, capped off by a strong performance by Bush, not the most natural speaker behind a podium, also is likely to put Bush fans at ease and temper any thinking among competitors that the Floridian is less formidable than advertised. Some Bush supporters worried because his strong fundraising failed to scare other top tier candidates out of the race. Others were concerned after he stumbled over questions about his brother’s handling of the 2003 Iraq war.
In his remarks, Bush sought to quell any speculation about his readiness for the long fight ahead or his willingness to wage a battle for the nomination.
“Campaigns aren’t easy, and they’re not supposed to be. And I know that there are good people running for president. Quite a few, in fact,” Bush said. “Not a one of us deserves the job by right of resume, party, seniority, family, or family narrative. It’s nobody’s turn. It’s everybody’s test, and it’s wide open, exactly as a contest for president should be.”
“The outcome is entirely up to you, the voters,” he added. “It is entirely up to me to earn the nomination of my party and then to take our case all across this great and diverse nation.”
Bush’s acknowledgement of the competitive Republican primary field did not stop him from making the case that his rivals were unqualified to lead the United States at a time of national security threats abroad and economic stagnation at home.
It was a not too subtle jab at the U.S. senators in the race, chief among them Marco Rubio, the 44-year-old Florida Republican who Bush mentored on his way up in Sunshine State politics and who served as speaker of the state House of Representatives during a portion of his gubernatorial administration. Earlier Monday, Rubio issued a statement welcoming his friend, “someone I like, care for and respect” into the race. Bush offered a gracious thank-you on twitter.
But the two are fierce rivals.
They’re both tier-one candidates and could find themselves in a winner-take-all showdown for Florida’s 99 nominating delegates if both are still standing when Republicans there vote in a March 15 primary. The loser would be effectively knocked out of the race. In his April announcement speech, also from Miami, Rubio didn’t mention bush by name but argued it was time for the GOP, and the country, to turn the page from leaders of “yesterday.”
Bush didn’t reference Rubio, either. He didn’t pull any punches, though, when comparing resumes.
“There’s no passing off responsibility when you’re a governor, no blending into the legislative crowd or filing an amendment and calling that success,” Bush said. “As our whole nation has learned since 2008, executive experience is another term for preparation, and there is no substitute for that.”
“We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helped create it or have proven incapable of fixing it,” he added.
Leading up to Bush’s speech, the long knives of the Democrats and their affiliates came after him. That’s the job of the opposition, but it could telegraph their fear of possibly running against a Republican from a swing state who speaks fluent Spanish and has made it his mission to appeal beyond the Republican base to Hispanics and other ethnic minorities. Indeed, Bush’s rally was marked by the appearance of more non-white faces than whites.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who also serves as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called Bush the most “inflexible, uncompromising” person she has ever worked with. Correct The Record, a pro-Clinton organization, said of Bush: “We already know what a Bush presidency would look like. We’ve seen it twice before. Jeb’s agenda looks just like any other Republican agenda – out-of-touch, out-of-date, and wrong for America.” That’s just a sampling.
Yet Bush, who has stressed that he wants to run a “joyful” campaign that emanates from his heart, showed that he could give as good as he gets. The ability to show some rhetorical fight could prove crucial to Bush if he is to overcome suspicion to his candidacy from conservatives who have accused him of being to moderate on key issues like immigration and education and unlikely to act boldly if elected.
The Republican contender blasted Obama and Clinton, by name, and criticized the two Democrats for presiding over a record of failure, both at home and overseas. Bush, a committed Catholic, lit into Clinton for remarks she made over the past few months suggesting that religious Americans needed to change their views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, insinuating that their faith was the problem.
With a strong contingent of Cuban Americans in the crowd at Miami Dade College, Bush tore into Obama’s decision to engage the Castro dictatorship in Cuba even through the authoritarian regime hasn’t made any commitments to liberalize society or one-party government rule on the island. Although younger Cubans are less Republican than their parents, the GOP still dominates with the community in South Florida because of its historical anti-communist position.
“From the beginning, our president and his foreign-policy team have been so eager to be the history makers that they have failed to be the peacemakers,” Bush said. “With their phone-it-in foreign policy, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team is leaving a legacy of crises uncontained, violence unopposed, enemies unnamed, friends undefended, and alliances unraveling.”
Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an advisor to Scott Walker.
