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The Bush Identity

Jeb Bush has no substantive disagreements with how his brother governed while president.
POTUS
President Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush in Miami Florida

For all their differences in personality and temperament, Jeb and George W. Bush appear to have never had any major policy disagreements:

Recent speeches and interviews have given few indications that Jeb Bush will vary drastically from his brother’s record or second-guess decisions like the Iraq invasion. James K. Glassman, founding director of the George W. Bush Presidential Institute, said that for all their personal distinctions, the brothers were in sync on issues. “I never ran into any examples of where they have a difference in policy,” he said [bold mine-DL].

If it seems unfair to hold Jeb Bush’s family name against him, it is worth remembering that he has no substantive disagreements with how his brother governed while president. That wouldn’t make him all that different from many other Republican politicians, but in his case the lack of any significant disagreement is that much more glaring. He needs to distinguish himself from his brother more than any other would-be candidate, and yet he had arguably made less of an effort at doing that than anyone being talked about for 2016. The younger Bush is reputedly the smarter, wonkier brother, and yet he has never offered a whisper of a dissent from the calamitous decisions of the former president. That suggests that he cannot see his brother’s failures or it means that he cannot admit them. Either way, someone like that mustn’t be trusted with the presidency, since he is liable to repeat many the mistakes of the last Republican administration. It would be one thing if he recognized his brother’s errors and sought to avoid them, but there is no reason to believe that he thinks that his brother erred, nor is there is evidence that he supports noticeably different policies. The public has already been conned once by a younger Bush, and the country paid for it dearly. It is imperative that Republican voters not make that mistake again.

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