In a leap from the blocks at the earliest presidential campaign starting gun in American history, Jeb Bush attempted a major rebranding of his family and his party’s political legacy on Wednesday.
The former governor presented “a new vision” and a “plan of action” on behalf of economically struggling families, arguing that his record at reforming Florida’s education system showed he could lead the way on the economy. Bush took questions about vaccination and immigration, and described at length for the first time what he would say to voters who may wince at his famous last name.
“I’m getting involved in politics again, because that’s where the work has to begin,” Bush said.
The speech was Bush’s first major public outing since the exit of former nominee Mitt Romney left him alone among the potential 2016 Republican presidential field as a moderate candidate with deep backing among established party figures and donors.
“Far too many Americans live on the edge of economic ruin,” Bush said at the Detroit Economic Club. “And many more feel like they’re stuck in place, working longer and harder, even as they’re losing ground.”
Bush debuted at least one major sales pitch that seemed built for the long months ahead, in which the potential candidate could be asked repeatedly to describe his qualifications to boost the economic prospects of middle-income families. Bush said that in reforming the education system in Florida, he had helped give students the basic tools for upward economic mobility.
The best way to “close the opportunity gap”, he said, was “doing everything we can to give every child, from every neighborhood, a great education”.
“The tire marks are there on my forehead to prove it,” Bush said. “We moved the needle on student learning.”
On transportation and business
Wearing an electric-blue tie with a flag pin on his lapel, Bush spoke with a smoothness verging on generic, without the sometimes halting delivery of his older brother, George W Bush. He called out the federal government on everything from regulating companies like Uber to a failure to make money in the Amtrak snack car, saying Washington can’t fix the US economy if it “can’t figure out how to sell snacks on a train”.
“Of course in Amtrak, they lose money on the snack car. It’s a captive audience,” Bush said.
“When government protects one business against another, or tilts the field against the competition, there’s a clear loser,” Bush said. “Standing against competition and dynamism is a losing battle.”
2016, vaccinations and immigration
Despite an already crowded potential field a full 21 months before election day, Bush has solid footing in the polls: Quinnipiac University measured him ahead of his rivals on Wednesday in the key swing states of Florida and Ohio – although potential Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton bested Bush in both places in the poll.
As the moment to formally launch his campaign approaches, the popular former governor is beginning to reveal his platform, which appears to focus intensively on a lack of upward mobility for middle-class families, wage stagnation and other core blue-collar economic concerns.
But he also started answering a question posed to several possible 2016 presidential contenders this week: what does the former governor think about vaccinations?
“Parents ought to make sure their children are vaccinated. Do we need to get into any detail of that? I’ve done this, I’ve said things that are misinterpreted, and heads explode,” he said. “Parents have the responsibility to make sure their kids are protected, over and out.”
On another contentious issue pitting potential candidates against the Obama administration, Bush seemed to cast aside doubt on an issue that is widely seen as a major winner for his would-be campaign.
“Immigration’s not a problem” for the country but a source of American strength, he said.
“They need to secure the border, first and foremost.” He said President Obama had “gone beyond his constitutional powers” by using his executive authority to change immigration law.
‘We must be engaged’
Bush displayed his strategy for responding to a question he is sure to be asked many times: how is he different from the past Bush presidents?
“I love my dad, in fact my dad is the greatest man alive, and if anybody disagrees, we’ll go outside – unless you’re, like, six-five, 240, then we’ll negotiate,” Bush said. “I love my brother, and I think he’s been a great president. I love them … But I know for a fact that if I’m going to go out there, I’m going to have to do it on my own.”
Bush twice offered to “go outside” and fight anyone who disagreed with him on two ideas: that his father was the greatest man alive, and that right now is the best time ever to be alive.
“Anybody who wants to disagree with me on that, we can go outside, too. This is a time of enormous opportunity,” he said.
Jeb Bush said that the United States had failed to remain engaged in the world, that its “strongest allies” including Israel felt abandoned and that terrorism had flourished as a result.
“As we pulled back from the Middle East, look what happened. Look what happened with Isis in Iraq,” he said. “We must be engaged. That does not mean boots on the ground in every occurrence. This is not a zero-sum game.
“Ask Israel today, does the United States have their back? Ask eastern Europe. Ask the Middle East, does the United States have their backs?”
But he did offer this: “being engaged does not mean launching attacks.”
Detroit and economic prospects
The Bush political dynasty is not known for invigorating the economic prospects of mid-level earners. President George W Bush, Jeb’s brother, presided over the start of a recession that disproportionately harmed the economic prospects of the American middle class, and he signed into law two major tax cuts in which the top 0.1% netted almost 20% of the savings, according to a Tax Policy Center study. Sixty-five percent of the savings from the cuts went to the top fifth of earners.
“I know some in the media think conservatives don’t care about the cities,” Bush told his audience in Detroit, which emerged last December from the largest city bankruptcy in US history. “But they are wrong. We believe that every American and in every community has a right to pursue happiness. They have a right to rise.”
To come across as a credible candidate on working-class issues, Bush must also convince voters that he is not like past presidential nominees from his party, political watchers insist.
A successful pitch for Bush in Detroit would make for a sharp contrast with the last Romney campaign, which foundered in part because the candidate was perceived as beholden to America’s richest few and disdainful of the less wealthy. After recommending in print to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, Romney lost Michigan, the state where he grew up and where his father was governor, by 10 points to President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.
Detroit shed 20% of its residents at the end of the George W Bush years, and remains $18bn in debt. The Detroit Economic Club is a regular forum for national politicians and business leaders, including Obama, who made a splash there during his first presidential run with a speech calling on automakers to improve their fuel economy.
Laying out the policies that would drive the redistribution of economic opportunity described in his speech, he drew a contrast between his policies and “the progressive and liberal mindset [that] believes that to every problem there is a Washington DC solution”.
Bush described multiple planks he said could drive a new recovery – “the right to rise,” he called it. Bush’s first plank emphasized the importance of two-parent families – but noticeably did not rule out families built around same-sex marriages.
A simple measure of success for children, he said, was “were they raised in a loving household by two parents?”
“If you did, you had an overwhelming advantage in life … It’s critical that government leaders recognize that, and support it,” Bush said.
He named four other planks: economic growth, less regulation, education reform and states’ rights.
“I don’t know what that makes me,” Bush said to Sandy Baruah, the emcee and head of the Detroit Economic Club. “Everybody has to have a title. What would you call me, Sandy?
“President.”
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