November 8th, 1994 is one of the hinge moments in modern American politics. If you wanted to write a counter-factual chronicle of recent American politics you could do worse than begin with the night George W Bush was elected Governor of Texas and Jeb Bush was defeated by Lawton Chiles in Florida. The 63,940 votes by which Chiles defeated Jeb changed American politics.
Jeb, you see, was supposed to be the Guy. He was the Bush who would make it big on the national stage. 1994 changed that, knocking Jeb out the game and opening a door for Dubya. Bill Minutaglio’s biography of George suggests that the brothers’ parents saw it that way too. George Sr and Barbara were more concerned with consoling Jeb than congratulating George Jr. Just this once, can’t you be happy for me? complained George Jr.
Ever since Jeb has been, quietly and unobtrusively, the Republican party’s King Over the Water. What might have been! Naturally this status encourages one to over-estimate Jeb’s political gifts and savvy but even so there’s something to it. ‘Tis tough, surveying the shipwreck of the Dubya Years, not to suppose that the wrong Bush won.
So it’s no great surprise to witness a Jeb 2012 boomlet. Tim Montgomerie raved about him in the Times the other day. Now, rather more significantly (sorry, Tim), National Review’s editor Rich Lowry does the same. He makes a good enough argument that Jeb should not wait until 2016. It’s not a bad case either though in giving eight reasons why Jeb should run it’s telling that no fewer than three of them touch upon the poor man’s surname:
4) The Bush rehabilitation has begun. George W. Bush is not exactly popular, but two years of Obama have taken the edge off W.-hatred, and he’s risen from the depths of his unpopularity near the end of his presidency. Gallup had a poll in December that had Bush’s approval rating very slightly above President Obama’s. Bush’s book, Decision Points, and the accompanying media tour were successes. In 2008, Jeb’s association with his brother would have been an absolute killer. That’s not true anymore. The controversies that made the Bush years so venomous have faded, and — partly through the miracle of the accelerated news cycle — 2000–2008 already feels somewhat distant.
5) Jeb will still be a Bush in 2016. There’s no doubt that it will always be awkward for Jeb to be the third Bush; it will always have a dynastic feel about it. But that will remain as true in 2016. If Jeb runs in four years, after Obama presumably wins a second term in 2012, he will still be vying to be the third Republican president in a row who’s a Bush. Waiting until 2016 won’t make that fact any less odd.
6) He’s not just another Bush. Jeb is different from his patrician dad and different from his thoroughly Texan brother. As soon as people see him on the national stage, they’ll realize he’s his own person and has to be taken on his own terms.
Lowry remarks that as a pro-life conservative Bush could “unite” the party and that may be so. But his liberal views on immigration will prove a problem and since Lowry promises that National Review will kick him on that issue, Jeb faces a serious dilemma: satisfy the base and risk losing the Hispanics and moderate voters (who don’t like being associated with “harsh” immigration rhetoric) that are a large part of the premise for your candidacy or keep your own base and risk losing the conservative movement?
That’s trivial, mind you, compared with the Surname Problem. Even if we grant Lowry’s contention that “the Bush rehabilitation has begun” there’s an enormous difference between thinking Dubya weren’t as bad as all that and being comfortable with the notion of putting a third Bush into the Oval Office. Lowry is right to suppose that the dynastic thing will still be a problem in 2016 but if it’s a problem in six years time it must surely be a still bigger problem in two years time.
It’s true that Jeb could help the GOP make up lost ground amingst college-educated voters but I wonder if many of those who might otherwise be favourably disposed to a sensible Republican won’t also be troubled by the dynastic question. The United States might be a Republic In Name Only but that doesn’t mean it will enthusiastically embrace the laws of succession. (Though Congress, like the Irish Dail, is a place in which it is possible to inherit your seat. Britain, Etonians and all, seems to take a more Roundheaded view of these things.) This all seems doubly improbable when it comes to unseating an incumbent President and it will, in the end, seem a little unseemly to put another Bush on the ticket. What next, George P Bush 2024?
All this is most unfortunate since Jeb is accomplished and sane and likely to be a better President than any of the likely GOP nominees. But there it is, nevertheless. A Bush has been on the Republican ticket in six of the past eight Presidential elections. That’s enough, surely? Lawton Chiles and the people of Florida could have spared us all this and much else besides. But they didn’t. The fools.
But in the unlikely even he does run, you can bet that all the posters and all the ads go heavy on “Jeb” and very, very light on “Bush”.
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