Jeb Bush Reboots
http://www.wsj.com/articles/jeb-bush-reboots-1434410000
His pitch is that he can reform Washington as he did Florida.
Jeb Bush formally launched his presidential campaign on Monday, and no candidate needed it more. The former Florida Governor’s non-campaign so far has been curiously defensive, but now he has a new opening to make the case for why he can beat Hillary Clinton and be a worthy President.
Mr. Bush’s drawn-out pre-campaign allowed him to help his Super PAC raise money, and fundraising has been his biggest success to date. Money is an important measure of support, especially in a GOP field that is larger and more formidable than any in memory. Mr. Bush’s cash hoard will give him staying power to make it to the Florida primary or the later regional contests in an extended race.
But Mr. Bush’s long launch fuse has also made his candidacy seem more hesitant than dynamic, more biographical than about leading a larger cause. He has spent more time answering questions about his family name, and his brother’s foreign policy, than he has laying out his own campaign principles.
The focus on biography is especially harmful because many Republicans are instinctively averse to nominating the third Bush in 30 years. This does not mean Jeb should take the media bait of trying to explain how he is different than either his brother or his father. It does require offering a vision and agenda that are bold enough to set the terms of the debate, and then show that he can sell them.
The latter is important as a contrast with his brother, who had a difficult time making the case for conservative ideas. George W. was a back-slapper in a way Jeb is not, but Jeb understands policy in a way that George W. and their father George H.W. rarely made clear. Conservatives haven’t had a great political communicator since Reagan. Voters will make their own judgments about whether Jeb is a different, better brand of Bush.
In his announcement speech, Mr. Bush rightly made his primary goal to lift the country out of its Obama-era economic lethargy. “We will take Washington—the static capital of this dynamic country—out of the business of causing problems,” he said.
He set a target of returning to 4% annual growth in GDP, which may sound like a stretch after the Obama era of close to 2%. But the country had a run of 4%-plus growth in both the 1980s and 1990s, and Mr. Bush said so did Florida when he was Governor.
The 62-year-old made much of his Florida record, also with good cause. Along with former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Mr. Bush is arguably the most successful state executive of the last 20 years.
“Bush made Florida into a laboratory of conservative governance,” writes Matthew Corrigan, a professor who is no conservative but whose book “Conservative Hurricane: How Jeb Bush Remade Florida” is the definitive rebuttal to those who portray him as a moderate. It is also a way to contrast his experience with the Senate candidates who’ve never run anything.
In two terms Mr. Bush left his fast-growing state’s government relatively smaller and its tax burden lower. He reformed tort laws and eliminated racial preferences.
He was in particular a pioneer in education reform, especially school choice and despite a hostile state supreme court that ruled that school vouchers violated the state constitution’s Blaine Amendment, an anti-Catholic remnant of the 19th century.
Mr. Bush worked around the court with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship that lets donors deduct from their tax bills contributions to school scholarships for private or public schools. It has since grown into one of the largest voucher programs in the country, and it has become a model for other states, most recently Nevada.
Another Bush asset is his proven ability to attract non-Republican voters. He stepped down as Governor with a nearly 60% approval rating in a state that Barack Obama carried twice and Bill Clinton once. Republicans can’t retake the White House without Florida and other swing states like Colorado and Virginia with growing minority populations.
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In 2016 the biggest divide in the GOP field isn’t between conservatives and moderates. The most important contrast concerns political strategy and pits the dividers against the uniters. Mr. Bush, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and perhaps Ohio Governor John Kasich think the GOP has to expand its appeal with an inclusive message of growth, upward mobility and a softer edge on the culture. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum believe the path to the nomination and victory in 2016 is to polarize the national debate around immigration and cultural issues.
The polarizing strategy was plausible when the GOP could claim a presidential majority. But Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections, and demography is moving their way. That is why Mrs. Clinton is so eager to run as an Elizabeth Warren-Barack Obama polarizer. Conservatives will do better if they seek to expand the GOP and make a case for unifying the country.
Mr. Bush’s candidacy enlivens this GOP debate and adds to the list of candidates who would give the coronated Mrs. Clinton a run for the Clinton Foundation’s money.
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