Another Bush in the White House?
February 11, 2007
Book: Jeb Bush will run for presidentBY BILL COTTERELL
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE ADVERTISEMENT
TALLAHASSEE — “Jeb Bush is going to hate this book.”
That’s the opening salvo in a 370-page broadside by a veteran Capitol journalist who is convinced that Florida’s most famous ex-governor wants to be president. In “JEB: America’s Next Bush,” reporter Shiroishi Date advances a plausible-on-paper scenario for Florida’s 43rd governor to run for the nation’s highest elective office.
Date writes the run could happen even as soon as next year, despite Bush’s repeated denials of national ambition.
“Given his personality, given his sense of mission, given that his father and his clearly less-qualified brother have both accomplished this, it’s hard to imagine Jeb not running for president,” Date writes.
Although his surname is tattered by his older brother’s low approval ratings, both Bushes remain popular with the party loyalists who vote in GOP primaries. And Date reasons that, at 54, Jeb Bush is too young and ambitious to languish in commercial real estate boardrooms and policy-work think tanks around Miami for long. Bush left the Governor’s Mansion in January at the term-limited end of eight years as Florida’s chief executive.
“For Jeb, the biggest factor that will push him into a presidential campaign will be his own boredom,” Date writes.
Leon County Democratic chairman Rick Minor, a public policy consultant, said it is “too soon” for Jeb Bush to overcome his brother’s unpopularity. But he agreed with Date’s thesis that we haven’t heard the last of him.
“It’s kind of ironic,” said Minor. “The Bush name has helped both Jeb Bush and his brother, but now it’s a disadvantage if Jeb Bush wants to run.”
Date, the Tallahassee bureau chief of the Palm Beach Post, has a political science degree from Stanford and previously covered state government and politics for the Orlando Sentinel and Associated Press. He is at work on his sixth Florida-centered novel. His previous nonfiction work was “Quiet Passion,” a biography of ex-Sen. Bob Graham.
Date makes no secret of his disdain for Bush’s conservative policies. In “JEB,” he accurately recounts the impact of Bush’s tax cuts, his dismantling of affirmative action, his cavalier attitude toward public records and open meetings, school tuition-voucher plans and other landmarks of the administration.
But his narrative is also marked by ventures into less strictly objective areas, such as calling Bush “not only a liar, but an accomplished one” and describing him as “a tall, mean guy with a giant head and twitching nose hairs.”
Date — pronounced DAH-tay — said in an interview he doesn’t dislike Bush. He just thinks winning outweighs fair play in the autocratic chief executive’s “bred to rule” approach to government. Bush did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Gov. Charlie Crist might be a hindrance to any future political ambitions Bush harbors, Date said. He said Crist’s moderate “people’s governor” style of seeking bipartisan cooperation, and respecting the Legislature and courts, is moving the mainstream of the GOP away from Bush’s more conservative, confrontational stance.
“Charlie can be an absolute menace to Jeb’s future,” Date said as he watched one of his sons practice baseball with a Tallahassee kid league.
“As popular as he is, Charlie is redefining what being a Republican means in Florida and that shortens Jeb’s window for running. He can’t count on being the Republican name brand for long.”
University of South Florida political science professor Susan MacManus disagreed with Date’s estimate that Bush wants to be president — at least, not so soon. But she said the author is right about Crist quickly supplanting him as the public face of the Republicans.
“You look at Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All your Republicans in large, diversified states are more moderate now,” she said. “They’re definitely trying to change the image of the party.”
MacManus, who served on a Bush healthcare advisory board in the 1998 transition, said “Bush fatigue” will hurt the ex-governor in the foreseeable future. But if the Democrats win in 2008, the brand name could be quickly rehabilitated in 2012, she said, and a third Bush presidency would be plausible.
“Jeb is a realistic guy,” said MacManus. “He realizes that right now the Bush name is not so golden.” She said Bush will probably spend a term or two traveling the country, raising money for congressional and gubernatorial candidates and state parties and piling up political IOUs.
That’s what Presidents Nixon and Reagan did in their wilderness years. Date doesn’t challenge that scenario but he said Bush can’t let Crist or some other new face become the public persona of a key “purple” state. Running for vice president doesn’t fit Bush’s top-dog style, Date said, but even if his ticket loses next year a stint as the loyal running mate would be an investment — as it was for Nixon, Walter Mondale, and ex-Sen. John Edwards, not to mention Bush’s father.
And besides, Date said, if Bush doesn’t run next year and the Republicans win, he’ll have to wait until 2016. He’ll be 63 then, young by presidential standards, but will have been out of office for 10 years — while the family’s big-donor list will have died off or found other GOP favorites.
“He could be forced to make a serious play next year,” Date said, “as absurd as that might seem now.”
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070211/BREAKINGNEWS/70211008
