Pondering another Bush in the White House

We’ve now seen the first real snowfall in the northeastern United States. Politically, that corresponds with a gentle rain of money and campaign talent falling on GOP presidential aspirants. Ideas and charm only take you so far. If the big donors aren’t lining up beside you, your chances of getting much past the Iowa caucuses are slim to nil. And an amateur campaign staff can fatally hobble a good candidate.

It was because Jeb Bush was drawing Mitt Romney’s support network into his orbit that Romney began speechifying like a man running for office again. Romney had to freeze the slide of assets heading toward the Bush organization while he made a decision on whether or not to run. Now that Romney is out, the race for money and manpower may begin in earnest—but the primary season is still a year away.

Romney’s decision also focuses attention squarely on the former Sunshine State governor as the obvious frontrunner, and Republicans must begin forming their opinions on the man: good, tolerable, or never.

The first consideration is the most obvious: He’s a Bush. When you send a Bush to the White House, you are sending an entire Bush team with him. Brother George W. brought some of his Texas team with him (Karl Rove, Karen Hughes), but a federal administration requires a huge multitude. Whoever takes over the occupancy of the Oval Office has to reach beyond his state organization and campaign team. George W. drew upon his father’s administration from just eight years earlier, calling up people like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Having served two terms as governor of Florida, Jeb Bush has a trusted network that is entirely his own, but he would also need some of his brother’s people from 2001 to 2009. Whether you see that as an asset or a liability depends on your view of the Bush establishment.

Experience running a state government is a résumé highlight for any presidential aspirant. We’ve seen what happens when someone is promoted to the country’s highest executive office who has never run anything but the Harvard Law Review and has never had to deal with the disagreement of political rivals except to cast votes against them. But there are several other successful governors eyeing the race.

Jeb Bush is winsome and demonstrably capable. His conservative record in government—morally and fiscally—qualifies him as a serious primary candidate. But he carries with him that Bush preoccupation with strong federal involvement in education, which should be a state and local responsibility. On immigration he seems to be moderate, but in the present Republican world that just means he is seeking a workable and humane solution to a swamp of a problem that has been decades in the making.

Dream candidates only exist in dreams, and they are electable only in dream countries. The candidates voters tend to support in primaries are usually a compromise, even more so in a general election. It will soon be time for Republican primary voters (a real contest on the Democratic side, in my opinion, is unlikely) to consider the field: each one’s stated principles, governing experience and record, moral character and personality, and all this in relation to the unique needs of our time, domestic and international, and what will appeal to the wider electorate. No small task.