Jeb Bush has set out to resuscitate a campaign he insists is not on life support, kicking off a tour on Monday that will cast the former Florida governor as a proven leader amid a sea of candidates with less executive experience.
Against the backdrop of his new slogan, “Jeb Can Fix It”, Bush took veiled jabs at his onetime Florida ally Marco Rubio, the young senator who bested him in a memorable confrontation during last week’s Republican presidential debate.
“The challenges we face as a nation are too great to roll the dice on another presidential experiment,” Bush said. “The answer isn’t sending someone from one side of the capital city to the other.”
Bush also took shots at Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, although he did not mention the real estate mogul by name.
“You can’t just tell Congress … ‘You’re Fired’ … and go to a commercial break,” he said, adding later: “I will not trade in an optimistic outlook to put on the cloak of an angry agitator.”
But the broader emphasis of Bush’s speech was to spotlight his tenure as a two-term governor to make the case that he, unlike other candidates in the race, has the track record to steer a country marred by gridlock.
“The campaign trail is littered with candidates disguised as television critics. Politicians echoing poll-tested pabulum,” Bush said. “But leadership is something far different.
“It’s not about telling people what they want to hear, but what they must hear. It’s not about saying the right thing, but doing the right thing.”
Coinciding with the release of his new e-book Reply All, the campaign rally was the first in a series of events across early voting states this week in which Bush will seek to emphasize how he engaged directly with constituents in the past to solve even the smallest of their problems. The book, which has been in the works for almost a year, recaps Bush’s time as Florida’s governor from 1999 to 2007 through the lens of his electronic correspondence with constituents, staff and colleagues.
Bush, who was known to give out his personal email to constituents, recalled at the top of his rally how he put his team on the job of removing a raccoon from an elderly woman’s attic after she had written to the governor.
The anecdote was to serve as a reminder of how Bush would like to portray himself: a candidate with heart, intent on running a “joyful” campaign.
That image was widely questioned in recent weeks, as Bush took to criticizing Rubio in televised interviews and then in an ill-fated attack on the senator’s penchant for missing votes at his day job in the last debate.
At the rally, Bush rejected the premise that the election would be decided by “sound bites ... or which candidate can interrupt the loudest”.
“This election is not about a set of personalities,” Bush said. “It’s about a set of principles.”
He acknowledged his shortcomings, however, by running through the long list of advice he has received of late: some stylistic, like removing his glasses or changing his tie, and some more strategic: “Nail that zinger. Be angrier. Hide your inner wonk.”
Ultimately, Bush said, he had two takeaways from his time in Florida that he would look to in his bid for the nation’s highest office.
“One, I can’t be someone I’m not. And, two, getting things done isn’t about yelling into a camera, or regurgitating sound bites free of substance,” he said.
“One, I can’t be someone I’m not. And, two, getting things done isn’t about yelling into a camera, or regurgitating sound bites free of substance,” he said.
Some of Bush’s financial backers have privately said he has limited time to turn the ship around, a fact that was evidenced in Republican mega-donor Paul Singer’s decision on Friday to support Rubio. In another boost, the senator on Monday received the backing of Cory Gardner – another young, rising Republican star who is a senator from Colorado, a critical swing state.
“Our country needs a new generation of leadership and I believe Marco Rubio presents this nation with the greatest possibilities and opportunities to meet the challenges of this generation,” Gardner told Fox News.
“If we are going to put Marco Rubio on the ballot, that’s our best foot forward, that’s our best opportunity to defeat Hillary Clinton,” he said.
Bush has his own wide network of supporters, both from the donor class and establishment lawmakers past and present, who will undoubtedly be keeping a close eye on his efforts to reboot his campaign.
There have been several shakeups already, some even predating the formal launch of Bush’s candidacy, like the selection of a new campaign manager when the “exploratory phase” of his presidential run did not go as smoothly as planned.
In August, there were more hiccups: pay cuts to senior staff and the departure of top fundraisers when money did not pour in as expected despite a record-setting war chest established before Bush got into the race. And then, just before the most recent debate, there were across-the-board pay cuts and the reshuffling of staff from the campaign’s Miami headquarters and out into the early voting states.
Bush conceded rough times were upon his campaign in an interview Sunday, but he was nonetheless defiant about his prospects to overcome the challenges before him.
Bush conceded rough times were upon his campaign in an interview Sunday, but he was nonetheless defiant about his prospects to overcome the challenges before him.
“I have enough self-awareness to know that this is the bumpy time of a campaign,” Bush told NBC’s Meet the Press. “This is the process. I totally understand it, and I’m more than prepared to fight on.”
That fighting spirit was on full display Monday before a supportive home crowd that enthusiastically cheered Bush’s barbs aimed at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and swarmed the former governor after his speech.
His remarks were ostensibly focused not on his rivals, but on the current administration and the implications of electing another Democrat to the White House in 2016. There was sharp criticism of Obama’s foreign policy in Syria – red lines “crossed without consequence” – and warnings of the threat posed by Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Bush also dove into a lengthy critique of Washington as he again sought to draw from his résumé in Florida to underscore why he was best prepared to change the prevailing culture of partisanship.
“I’m putting the Beltway on notice. I’ll turn Washington upside down, too,” he said.
In the coming days, Bush will take the same message to South Carolina and New Hampshire in the hopes of persuading Republican primary voters not to heed the predictions of political pundits. Speaking to the crowd in Florida, he promised to be the one to define his candidacy in the weeks and months to come.
“I will do everything in my power to win this race,” Bush said. “I am running this campaign on my own terms.
“And let me tell you something: when the dust clears, and the delegates are counted, we’re gonna win this damn thing.”
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