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Bush’s Uninspired Announcement Speech

Bush avoided addressing specific foreign policy issues in his announcement.
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Jeb Bush delivered his announcement speech well, and it was probably the best performance I’ve seen from him since he started publicly “exploring” his presidential bid late last year. Unlike his foreign policy speech in Chicago earlier this year, his delivery wasn’t rushed. As official campaign launches go, it has to be considered a success.

That said, the content of the speech was not terribly interesting. It contained the usual railing against lobbyists and “pampered elites” that we have come to expect from these speeches. This is standard, uninspired stuff, but it is made even more ridiculous when it is delivered by the scion of a wealthy family and would-be heir to a presidential dynasty. No one seriously believes that Bush intends to combat the culture of lobbying in D.C., and it is a given that he is the favored candidate of “pampered elites” everywhere. Bush indulged in his passion for education reform at length, which is fine but not terribly relevant to the job he’s seeking. He talked about what he would do about this as president while simultaneously affirming that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in setting standards. I don’t think he believes the latter, and if he hopes to push his education reform as president he can’t mean what he said. His 4% growth goal for the economy sounds nice, but it is fantastical, and it does no one any favors to make such outlandish promises.

The speech did contain a few statements on foreign policy that deserved some comment. This section of the speech was not very long, but it included at least one bizarre assertion:

This supposedly risk-averse administration is also running us straight in the direction of the greatest risk of all – military inferiority.

This isn’t just the usual hawkish lament that military spending isn’t expanding by as much as they would like. Bush is claiming that the U.S. is on a path to overall military inferiority. Inferiority to what or whom he never bothers to explain, and that’s because he’s talking nonsense. Even if we accepted Bush’s assumption that this would be the “greatest risk of all,” it simply isn’t happening. The most charitable description of this one can offer is that it it is a irresponsibly alarmist. It is more accurate to call it dishonest demagoguery.

Bush vaguely referred to a need for “better judgment” in “relations far and near,” but except for the obligatory Israel reference he was unwilling to explain where or how he would do this. Which relationships does he think need to be mended, and why would he be qualified to do it? He isn’t going to tell us at this point. The interesting thing about the foreign policy section of the speech was how many high-profile issues Bush chose to avoid mentioning at all. There is no explicit reference to Iran or the nuclear negotiations. We know Bush is opposed to the talks based on other things he has said before, but it seems that he didn’t want to emphasize this. Neither is there any mention of the war on ISIS. The omission of any references to Europe or Russia was all the more striking since he had just returned from his trip to Europe. Perhaps the weirdest omission of all was Latin America, which is one part of the world where Bush could genuinely claim some understanding and experience. The exception to this was Cuba, but even here he dodged the main contemporary question of normalizing relations. Like Clinton in her speech on Saturday, Bush spoke as generically about foreign policy as he could. Despite his general denunciation of the administration’s record, he doesn’t seem inclined to take the risk of making specific arguments that can be scrutinized and challenged.

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