Donald Trump feuding with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio is one thing. Bush and Rubio feuding with each other is something else.
The two Florida friends — Bush was a mentor to Rubio when Bush was governor and Rubio rising in the legislature — knew a clash was coming when both chose to run for president. Now it’s here, and it has the potential to get ugly in a way that only fights between friends can.
It started Wednesday, when Bush, beset by falling poll numbers, answered a question from CNN about Rubio’s fresh-face, new-name appeal by comparing Rubio to Barack Obama in 2008 and questioning Rubio’s readiness for the Oval Office.
Stressing his own leadership abilities, Bush said of Rubio’s claim to be a new generation of leader, “Look, we’ve had a president who came in and said the same kind of thing, new and improved, hope and change, and he didn’t have the leadership skills to fix things.”
Thursday morning on MSNBC, Bush was asked to elaborate. Was he saying Rubio did not have the leadership skills to fix things?
“I think I have the leadership skills to fix things, and that’s my strength, and that’s what I talk about,” Bush began. “And Marco was a member of the House of Representatives when I was governor, and he followed my lead, and I’m proud of that.”
“But you do not think [Rubio] has the leadership skills to fix things?”
“It’s not known,” Bush said. “Barack Obama didn’t end up having them, and he won an election based on the belief that people had that he could.”
The Rubio-is-green-and-untested critique is one of the most effective any candidate can use against the 44-year-old junior senator from Florida. But Bush has apparently not always felt that way. Three years ago, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Bush sang Rubio’s praises while suggesting Mitt Romney pick Rubio to run for vice president.
It happened in a June 2012 interview with CBS’s “Charlie Rose.” Bush emphatically said he would not accept a spot on the Romney ticket and instead brought up Rubio.
“Marco Rubio is my favorite, because we have a close relationship and I admire him greatly,” Bush said. “He’s probably the most articulate conservative elected official on the scene today. He speaks with great passion about American exceptionalism.”
Rubio would “lift the spirits” and “provide some energy” to the Romney campaign, Bush said. But Rose wanted to know if Rubio “has enough preparation to be one heartbeat away from the presidency?”
“I believe so,” Bush said. “Look, he has more experience than Barack Obama had when he ran, and more practical experience, certainly has the intellectual acumen and the fortitude to be a good president.”
That was three years ago, when Rubio was younger and less experienced than he is today. What a difference a campaign makes.
So far, Rubio, who has taken to exchanging shots with Donald Trump at every opportunity, has not responded to Bush.
But people in Bush’s circle reject any suggestion that Bush cast the first stone. They point all the way back to April, and Rubio’s speech announcing his candidacy, when Rubio framed the race as “a generational choice about what kind of country we will be.”
“Our country has always been about the future,” Rubio said, and it can’t make progress “by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past.”
Political observers at the time saw Rubio’s remarks as a clever twofer, targeting both Hillary Clinton and Bush. The Bush team certainly got the message. Given that, if Bush is today asked a direct question contrasting his leadership skills with Rubio’s, he’ll say what he thinks. Marco’s a good guy, Bush now says; he followed my lead very nicely.
This is still pretty tame stuff; just compare it to the junior high school exchanges between Trump and Rubio. But it’s probably just the beginning. And it had to happen, no matter how much Bush and Rubio admired each other in an earlier time.
