Jeb Bush’s foreign policy platform comes with a few disclaimers about his last name.
On Wednesday, as Bush sought to outline his priorities in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, he noted that he is “lucky to have a father and a brother who both have shaped America’s foreign policy from the Oval Office.”
“I recognize that as a result, my views will often be held up in comparison to theirs, sometimes in contrast to theirs,” Bush said. “But I am my own man, and my views are shaped by my own thinking and own experiences.”
In a series of speeches, Bush is gradually rolling out those views to the public and donors, a preview of his presidential campaign to come. The former Florida governor’s foreign policy address Wednesday was his second major policy speech, following one earlier this month in Detroit on economic policy.
Bush has a lot to prove on the path to the presidency — namely, that he is more than the heir to a political legacy.
But on foreign policy, at least, Bush has not diverged significantly from his father or brother, even while declaring his independence.
In his remarks Wednesday, Bush pressed for the U.S. to take an active role abroad, in an approach he called “liberty diplomacy.”
“If we withdraw from the defense of liberty, the battle eventually comes to us anyway,” Bush said.
This emerging foreign policy vision incorporates more military spending and more foreign engagement, projecting strength at home and abroad.
“Nothing and no one can replace strong American leadership,” Bush said.
If that framework sounds reminiscent of Bush White Houses past, Jeb Bush’s stable of foreign policy advisers also stirs a sense of deja vu.
Of the 21 advisers, announced Wednesday, 19 worked in one or both previous Bush White Houses. The roster includes Paul Wolfowitz, who was among the architects of the war in Iraq, and Michael Chertoff, who helped draft the Patriot Act after the 9/11 attacks and went on to become the second secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush.
Bush has also solicited advice from alumni of his family’s administrations who will remain outside of his official campaign framework, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a Washington Post report.
The need for separation is mostly symbolic. Many Americans remember the foreign policy of President George W. Bush, marked by the war in Iraq, with mixed feelings or worse. Although Jeb Bush on Wednesday acknowledged “mistakes made in Iraq,” he stopped short of identifying who made those mistakes.
Meanwhile, Democrats are already trying to tie Bush to his brother’s legacy.
“Despite Jeb Bush’s claim that he will be his ‘own man’, there is little evidence that Jeb Bush’s foreign policy agenda is much different than his brother’s, and in the ways it is different, it may be even worse,” said Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.
Public polling bears out the challenge Bush will face in defining himself independent of his last name. In a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, more than one-third of voters in Colorado, Virginia and Iowa, a key presidential primary state, said they would be less likely to vote for Bush because of his family.
“Gov. Jeb Bush has a family problem. Many voters don’t like him coming from a family of presidents,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “If voters are still saying by 4-to-1 margins this makes them less likely to vote for him when the balloting begins, that will be trouble for him.”
The effect is more pronounced for Bush than for Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee whose husband was president, the poll showed.
Bush’s campaign did not respond to a request for information on what other steps he is taking to prepare on foreign policy. But he has traveled abroad, including a trip to London late last year, and made clear Wednesday that he understands the role foreign policy will play in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Notably, Bush did not attack Clinton on foreign policy Wednesday, instead honing his attacks on President Obama.
“The great irony of the Obama presidency is this,” Bush said. “Someone who came to office promising greater engagement in the world has left America less influential in the world.”
