Jeb to the Rescue: Too Bad His Name is Bush

The Republican Party has a quite appealing presidential prospect for 2012: Creative ideas, articulate style, pleasant personality, and experience running an important swing state.

There's just one problem with this guy. You guessed it, right? His last name is Bush.

Jeb Bush, the one his folks always thought would be president, resurfaced over the weekend at a suburban Washington pizza joint to kick off a new Republican policy group called the National Council for New America.

The hourlong session also featured former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, and your normal run of citizenry, such as the young man who insisted that "people learn more from listening to Rush Limbaugh's show than they do in high school and college."

My three takeaways:

First, the men of the new GOP wear shirtsleeves, sit on barstools and don't mind the occasional bracing dose of self-flagellation. At least in their off-hours on weekends.

Second, with all the talk of rethinking, rebranding and rebuilding the GOP, nobody mentioned one of the major reasons the repair job is needed. That would be Bush's big brother, former president George W., and the country's floor-scraping assessment of his two terms.

Third, from the standpoint of pure political talent, whether you agree with anything he says or not, Jeb stood out at this gathering – to the point of making me reconsider the whole Bush family drama as a national drama. As in, what if?

"He was very clearly the anointed son. You look at the parents. They always expected Jeb to do it. So did the siblings, all the brothers," said Doug Wead, who served and advised both President Bushes and wrote a book on presidential children. "Nobody's going to say it but they've got to be feeling disappointed that Jeb didn't have a chance."

Bush was out of position to run in 2000 because, while George W. became governor of Texas in 1994, Jeb lost his race in Florida and didn't get elected governor until 1998. He's been out of politics since finishing his two terms in early 2007 and makes light of any future in the business.

"I'm once removed from all the political stuff. That's why I may look like I have a smile on my face permanently," he said Saturday.

If he did get in, there'd no doubt be all kinds of baggage beyond the name Bush – starting with his role presiding over the election mess that gave his brother a 527-vote Florida win and sent him to the White House.

Still, Bush has two education foundations in Florida and he is a principal player in this new policy group aimed at expanding the appeal of the party. He's in the mix. So what does he want?

One possibility for Jeb is conservative "ideas person." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich holds that informal title right now. The party maybe could use someone who doesn't have a history of marital scandals or a favorable rating of 27% (Gingrich's level in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll two years ago; 48% viewed him unfavorably.)

Another possibility is restorer of the family name. "Rightly or wrongly, the Bush name has been tarnished. It's a brand name whose continuation and salvation are certainly worth a great deal to the family," said Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

It would be, he added, a "cosmic irony" if Jeb ended up "rescuing his brother's reputation."

The least likely, but not quite impossible possibility, is a third President Bush, or at least a third presidential nominee named Bush.

I know, I know, even most Republicans have had enough.

And yet.

"The guy was a very popular governor of a very big, important state. He could win that state right now," Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas historian and Bush family observer, said of Jeb. "He's got practical experience and he's more of a centrist" than his brother was as president.

Bush also has a gravitas that other GOP figures – Limbaugh, party chairman Michael Steele, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – do not. "He is smart. He knows a lot about policy. He's got a broad reach. He comes across in a way which is unthreatening," Renshon said.

On Saturday, speaking extemporaneously and fluidly, with no pauses or uhs or mangled syntax, Bush said he has watched politics ebb and flow since 1964, when he was nine years old and his dad was running for Senate. Now, he said, he's 56 "but political years are kinda like dog years so I'm about 550 in reality."

On the ideas front, the pickings were slim from all three men, but Bush had an interesting idea about strategic aid to college students. He would peg tuition to the need for certain graduates – lower tuition for people studying nursing, teaching, science and engineering, higher for Florida's No. 1 product, psychology majors.

George W. was present in what was left unsaid. Jeb said, for instance, that the GOP should be more forward looking. "Nostalgia for the good old days" doesn't draw people to your party, he said.

But what party wouldn't yearn for Ronald Reagan when their current president had a 28% Gallup approval rating on Election Day 2008, and numerous polls now show only one in five people call themselves Republicans?

Bush also criticized this year's $1.2 trillion debt, but he didn't mention it was run up, in large part, by his brother. And while he poked fun at Florida's overproduction of psychology majors, he also allowed that "maybe we need more psychologists in the times that we're in." Those times being the economic collapse that occurred on his brother's watch.

The continuing recession and wars make another Bush candidacy unimaginable right now. By the time they fade, new party leaders will be emerging and they'll have a significant advantage over Jeb. Their names won't be Bush.