Running with the Bushes

That’s the confident assessment of veteran Republican insiders focused on the next presidential campaign and an expected showdown with Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush left office a failed president in the minds of many Americans. Four years later, lingering Bush fatigue helped President Obama overcome challenges and defeat Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who never clearly defined how he would be different than the 43rd president.

After two Obama terms, Republicans say that “blaming Bush,” is no longer the viable strategy that drove Democratic victories in 2006 and Obama’s first White House win two years later. The president’s foreign and domestic policies, which enjoy middling support, will be on trial in 2016, not his predecessor. Americans’ habit of changing party control of the White House after eight years likely puts the burden on Clinton to prove how her administration would differ from Obama’s.

“I think it looks fairly certain that there will be a lot more discussion, understandably, of 44’s record than 43’s in the 2016 election,” said Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, a top Romney advisor in 2012. “I’m confident that we’ve reached the expiration date when ‘I’m not George W. Bush’ can pass as a substitute for a coherent vision of America’s role in the world.”

Jeb Bush is the exception. Because the former two-term Florida governor, 62, is George W. Bush’s brother and indeed the son of George H.W. Bush, the last Republican president before him, George W. Bush remains as an obstacle for Jeb Bush to navigate.

No matter how good voters feel about Bush 43 when GOP primary voters head to the polls next year — and if Jeb Bush wins the nomination, when they pull the lever in November of 2016 — his test is explaining how his administration would differ from his brother’s. Bush 43 faced a similar hurdle in regard to Bush 41 when he ran for president in 2000. Staunch Bush supporters concede it could be a complicated task for Jeb Bush.

Not all Republican political strategists are convinced that Jeb Bush is the only GOP presidential candidate who will have to make a clean break with “W.” Democrats will charge the Republican nominee with wanting to take the country back to the policies that led to the Iraq war and caused the 2008 financial crash. The charges will have less salience than against Romney in 2012, but the GOP is still going to have to have an answer.

“Successful presidential campaigns are always about the future, so no matter who the nominee is, they will have to make clear that they will not be a third Bush term. Obviously for Jeb that will be a much tougher message for voters to believe,” a Republican consultant said.

Jeb Bush “has started to do that,” said GOP pollster David Winston, who is not affiliated with a 2016 candidate. “But for him it’s going to be an ongoing dynamic that he’s going to have to manage, and it is going to be one of the elements of his campaign. He’s handled it quiet well.”

George W. Bush has maintained a low profile since his second term concluded in January of 2009, rarely speaking publicly on policy matters or to offer his own opinions of Obama’s leadership. This retreat to the background was in keeping with Bush’s views that former presidents should stay out of the way of their successors, and probably because being too out front wasn’t going to do his fellow Republicans any good.

So when Bush offered an appraisal this past weekend of Obama’s foreign policy, particularly his emerging deal to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities, at a private gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, it drew notice. Sources in attendance tell the Washington Examiner that Bush was hardly as critical of Obama as some have suggested. “I would say he was analytical, not critical,” said coalition member David Volosov of Silver Spring, Md.

“The remarks are being overblown,” added a second coalition member who was there but requested anonymity in order to discuss Bush’s remarks. “He was not personally critical of Obama and made a point to speak in general terms. He did express skepticism about the trustworthiness of the Iranians, wondering whether the change from Ahmadinejad to Rouhani was a change in spokesmen or a change in policy. He said lifting sanctions would reduce U.S. leverage.”

Democrats are no doubt happy to see George W. Bush inject himself into the debate.

Americans’ view the Iraq war that he initiated as a mistake, contributing to his political downfall and Obama’s rise. He was blamed for the real estate bubble and subsequent collapse, which came at the tail end of his presidency. Republicans have their own beef with Bush — for presiding over spending increases and an expansion of government.

But the political climate has changed significantly under Obama, while Bush’s foreign policy has received some positive re-evaluations in recent years.

Bush might have been blamed for the financial crash, but Obama is under fire for leading an economic recovery viewed as uneven and still treacherous for the poor and the middle class. Meanwhile, Bush’s foreign policy looks pretty good to many when compared to Obama, whose tenure has coincided with rise of the Islamic State, Iranian hegemony and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and saber-rattling in the Baltic states.

“I don’t think the eventual GOP ticket has to directly distance themselves from Bush,” said a Republican operative who is advising a 2016 contender. “But they will have to present a forward-looking approach that this candidacy is focused on the future, provide a means of moving forward with new policies, and is not the GOP of the past.”

Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an advisor to Scott Walker.