Poor Jeb. For two decades, the story has been that Jeb Bush was the victim of fate and his family, kept from great power by timing and luck. He was the star, the over-achiever, while his big brother George struggled with the son-and-heir syndrome that affects many namesakes. Jeb was the brain who — as opposed to his father and brother — sometimes had problems with words. Jeb should have won his governor’s race in 1994, the tale went, after which he would have run for president in 2000, and then been a much better president than George W.
After 2008, the story was that Jeb’s future was doomed by his father and brother, whose various failings had made the Bush name toxic. But 2015 has shed some new light on these matters, suggesting this take may be wrong.
Jeb’s had his chance now, since late last winter, and so far has not performed well. He’s dropped five points since his “shock and awe” entry, which seemed to shock no one, and frightened nobody out of the race. He flubbed a question concerning the war in Iraq and has seemed disengaged and outdated. A popular figure 10 years ago, Jeb seems out of sync with his time and his party. Last elected in 2002, and having left office in 2007, he seems focused on issues that are no longer that central to politics, and less taken with those — such as size-of-government issues and the rise of the Islamic State — that are.
“It can’t be seriously argued that he’s not a conservative,” Rich Lowry of the National Review has written. “The distinction to make here is that he’s a pre-Obama conservative. The last six years have marked an entire epoch of Republican politics — defined by the rise of the Tea Party and the fight against Obama’s agenda — that Bush has largely been absent from…[His] most attention-getting forays into the national debate in recent years have been defenses of positions on immigration and Common Core anathema to populist conservatives…and scolding the current Republican party for what [he] considers its various deficiencies. One of the main questions that [he] will have to answer is why he should lead a party that has undergone a generational change.”
Thus far, he has not. Instead, Jeb has gone out of his way to say that he might have to win against the will of the base of his party. That’s a sure-fire way to create opposition, making his nomination more difficult, and his election as president less likely still. Splitting your party isn’t sound politics. His father and brother never did that.
But while Jeb Bush has lost ground since announcing he would announce shortly, his presidential relations have been ticking upward, looking better in retrospect and against other people, as time moves forward. In retrospect, his father’s role in ending the Cold War and ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait seem more important than his tax-raising heresy. In retrospect, and after the rise of IS, his brother’s approval ratings have risen six points (to 52 percent approve against 43 percent disapprove) in the space of one year. President Obama is doing his best to make George Bush look better.
Jeb’s still a wonk, but his claim as a great politician seems more and more shaky. The wish to move on is quite real, but if their last names were Bush, would Walker or Rubio really be out of contention? Or would their vigor and freshness still carry the day?
The problem with Jeb Bush isn’t “Bush,” as the story would have it. The problem with Jeb Bush is “Jeb.”
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
