“Oh, no, not again.”

October 15, 2014

By Wally Gordon

My wife’s reaction was understandable. I hate giving bad news but sometimes you just have to face the miserable reality head on.

The miserable reality is that in recent days it has quietly developed that in two years the country will probably endure another Bush-Clinton shootout at the OK Corral.

With the exception of 2012, you have to go all the way back to 1976 to find a year in which a Bush or a Clinton (or both) wasn’t running for President. The Bush-Clinton saga could in the future easily extend until at least Jan 20, 2025, when the second term of the next President would expire. By then, most Americans will never have participated in an election (except 2012) when at least one of the clans wasn’t asking them to make him or her the country’s CEO.

That Hillary Clinton is weighing a second run for President has hardly been a secret. She has discussed the possibility in dozens of interviews. As a private citizen who holds no office, she has delivered scores of speeches around the country that serve no purpose except to keep her in the public eye. She has traveled to states like New Hampshire and Iowa that are important only to those who live there and presidential candidates. Just about every leading Democrat and every independent analyst believes that the Democratic presidential nomination is hers for the asking. All the polls show that if she runs, she will probably win the presidency.

Until now, the Republican side of the equation has been a lot murkier. A plethora of candidates have talked of running. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have said they are likely to run although none of them has yet amassed wide support. Several governors, among them those from Wisconsin and New Jersey, who are popular in their own states but lacking national recognition, are also likely to run.

But there is one, and only one Republican who has a substantial record of achievement, national name identification and broad support among both politicians and campaign contributors in the Republican Party. He is Jeb Bush, the 61-year-old former two-term governor of Florida. He is the son of George H.W. Bush and the younger brother of George W. Bush. He is also regarded as an abler politician than either of his presidential relatives.

Until recently there has been a lot of skepticism that he would run. For one thing his Hispanic wife is averse to public exposure and is believed to be opposed to his running. For another, he is on good terms with Rubio and is unlikely to compete against him in Republican primaries.

But of late Rubio’s star has faded. He did himself serious damage when he flip-flopped on immigration, disavowing his previous support for reform after the Tea Party jumped all over him. The impression he left with even his friends was that he was not mature enough or tough enough to stand up to pressure from the party’s far right wing. “He is not ready to be president,” a friendly fellow Republican senator lamented.

On the other hand, TV programs and political blogs and websites have been full of Bush news in recent days. His brother is urging Jeb to run. “I think he wants to be president,’” George Bush said on Fox News. “I think [Jeb would] be a great president. He understands what it’s like to be president.” His father seems to have no objections, although his mother Barbara Bush did voice doubts in an interview a year or so ago. “We’ve had enough Bushes,” she said. Even House Speaker John Boehner is urging Bush to run.

Most telling of all, Jeb Bush has been doing what putative candidates do. He has been traveling to a number of states to support and raise money for Republicans in this year’s election. If those he supports win, they will owe him debts that he could cash in during 2016. Last week he was in Kansas. He has scheduled a visit to South Carolina, the single most important primary state for Republicans.

Bush does have some negatives. He governed Florida as a centrist, albeit a conservative one, and is not a favorite of the Tea Party. He supports immigration reform. And he has been out of office and out of the spotlight for nearly eight years.

However, he has potentially strong credentials with Hispanics. Not only is his wife Columba a Mexican-American but he is fluent in Spanish. Most political observers believe the Republicans have no chance in 2016 unless they can improve their dismal record with Hispanic voters.

Bush has also supported the Common Core educational standards promoted by the Obama administration and backed a fiscal compromise—higher taxes in return for lower entitlement spending—that the Tea Party has rejected.

Many Republican money bags and bigwigs are biding their time to see if Bush will run, and if he does, they will jump on his bandwagon as agilely as a troop of kangaroos. He is regarded as one of the few Republicans who could win the enthusiastic support of the GOP mainstream while keeping the Tea Party in line.

Most important of all, the guy seems to be respected by those who know him. “Supporters say Bush comes across as the adult in the room,” noted an analysis in USA Today. “His flexible positions on immigration, education and taxes might not play well among Tea Party Republicans, but if he makes it past the primary his willingness to compromise on key issues could win over independent voters.”

Adding piquancy and even urgency to the 2016 contest is that this would probably be the last chance of either candidate to make a viable bid for the presidency. By November 2016, both will be well into their 60s (Clinton is now 67 and Bush 61). Eight years later, both will be septuagenarians.

So in December or January, when both Bush and Clinton have promised to announce their intentions and more than a year before the first caucus or primary vote, the presidential nominating campaign could be over.

I can only respond to my wife’s exclamation of despair with my own hopelessness: “Yes, alas, again.”

(Caricature of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush by DonkeyHotey under CC)

This piece was written by:

Wally Gordon

Wally Gordon, who was for 12 years owner and editor of The Independent in Edgewood, began his career with three summer jobs at The New York Times while he was a student at Brown University. He spent a decade with the Baltimore Sun, including stints as national investigative reporter and Washington Bureau manager. He has freelanced or been a staff writer and editor for dozens of newspapers and magazines all over the United States.

Extensive travels have taken him to all 50 states and more than 60 foreign countries. He wrote a novel in Spain, edited a newspaper in American Samoa, served in the U.S. Army in Iran and taught for two years at a university in West Africa.

He is the author of A Reporter's World: Passions, Places and People. The new nonfiction book is a collection of essays, columns, and magazine and newspaper stories published during his journalistic career spanning more than half a century. Many of the pieces were first published in The Independent or in other New Mexico newspapers and magazines. The book includes profiles of the famous, the infamous and the anonymous, travel and adventure yarns, and essays on the major issues and emotions of our times.

A native of Atlanta, he has lived in New Mexico since 1978 and in the East Mountains since 1990. He has been married for 28 years to Thelma Bowles, a native New Mexican who is a photographer and French teacher. They have one son, Sergei.