Yesterday, Former Florida Governor John Ellis Bush, better known as “Jeb,” made his candidacy for the White House official. While Mr. Bush is certainly not the first, second, or millionth choice of this journal to sit in the Oval Office, he is a plausible occupant of the round room. Some have even said it will be another Bush-Clinton election. That seems premature as both have yet to win their respective nominations, and nominating conventions are more than a year away. Either or both has plenty of opportunity to screw it up. While they share dynastic baggage as an issue, Mr. Bush has a harder path to victory if only because of the huge number of candidates on the Republican side.
Mr. Bush is running as the grown-up. He’s a conservative to be sure, but at the same time, he is offering a pragmatic, sensible-shoes approach to governing as a conservative. The term establishment moderate is slightly misleading because the GOP establishment is fragmented these days, and a 2015 moderate is something quite far to the right. In a race that features Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, however, not being a bomb-throwing extremist will have some appeal.
The downside to running that kind of campaign is that Lindsay Graham of South Carolina has already laid claim to that territory. While Mr. Bush has been out of office since 2007, Mr. Graham is a sitting US Senator who has seen off Tea Party primary challenges. On foreign policy, Mr. Graham claims great expertise (he can tell the difference between Austria and Australia on a map — which puts him in the top 10% among Americans when it comes to geography), and he has the backing of what remains of the McCain machine from 2008. Mr. Bush can challenge him on foreign policy, but if he does, the electorate will be reminded of his family and its very mixed results in international affairs.
Presuming he can neutralize Mr. Graham, Mr. Bush then faces the single most important question of 2016. Just what does the Republican primary/caucus electorate want their candidate to be? If the rank and file voters want a fire-brand, take-no-prisoners, Tea Party reactionary, the Bush campaign is doomed. His conservative record in Florida, and it is conservative, won’t do him any good because there are others more conservative who will throw red meat to the starving beast of the far right.
The Mike Huckabees and Ben Carsons pose little threat because they will lack the organization to mount a significant campaign beyond the first few contests. Marco Rubio and Scott Walker are different cases altogether. Both are more energetically conservative if that term can describe someone who gets reactionary blood flowing. Moreover, both have significant financial backing and support from important party operatives.
Mr. Bush cannot even count on his own home state of Florida to line up behind him because that is also Marco Rubio’s home state. Finishing second to Mr. Rubio there would be a mortal blow to Mr. Bush’s ambitions, and it is a genuine possibility. Mr. Bush’s comfort with the Latino voters there and across the country (his wife is from Latin America and his own proficiency in Spanish is solid) is undercut by Mr. Rubio’s Cuban background.
The dynastic issue will plague both his campaign and Mrs. Clinton’s, and that is unfair and unfortunate. Neither should be held responsible for the actions, decisions and political philosophy of family members. Each should be treated as an individual with distinct strengths and weaknesses, and their visions of America for 2020 and beyond ought not to be seen through the lens of what someone else did a decade or two ago. Yet, the whole world knows they will be. In this instance, Mrs. Clinton has the better hand to play. Most Democrats like her husband while most Republicans prefer to ignore President Bush the lesser, and most hard-rightists were never really comfortable with President Bush the Elder.
On election day, if it is another Bush-Clinton race, a general enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton on the Democratic side is a given. It is up to Mr. Bush to get the GOP as excited about his effort. As things stand right now, he would lose by about 5-7% of the popular vote, and Mrs. Clinton would get around 300 electoral votes. It’s quite a hill Mr. Bush must climb.