Why doesn’t Jeb Bush just enter?

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 8/18/11

Possibly Jeb Bush demurred about a run for the presidency in 2012 as he saw Obama to be unbeatable when the first Republicans headed toward the primary season. 2016 would be the better time. But with Gallup showing Obama today with a low approval of 26% on the economy that might have been a miscalculation. And now that a wily coyote has slipped in under the shadows of a Comanche moon and taken the lead over Mitt Romney and the rest of the pack after only having signed on three days ago, it is starting to look like a big mistake on Jeb’s part.

They, the Bushes, have been looking for a proxy; Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, John Thune, just anybody. All they need to do is win the primary and let Obama have it another four years. They can wait. Then it will be Jeb. But Perry is big, strong, unpredictable. Feral, dangerous and alive like west Texas. To think that Paul Ryan, running as a Bush proxy – he is being encouraged to run by former W. employee Mitch Daniels, Jeb and other Bush loyalists - would do any better than Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or the others against Perry, who has long been the Bushes worst nightmare, is the end of imagination.

Which is why this race is so interesting. The Bushes, like the Kennedys, have reached the end of imagination. Like Holmes and Moriarty, they may now be going over the falls together. Why doesn’t Jeb just enter himself against Perry? If Perry wins it will be a new strong force in American politics. A new political culture awakened in America. Jeb won’t have a chance in 2016 and will thereafter be long forgotten.

Always disliked that Bush senior compared himself and W. to the Adamses, who served as father and son presidents. A stunning presumptuousness to make such a claim about a Founding Father. And many Jeffersonians consider John Adams, father of the totalitarian Alien and Sedition acts, to be among the worst presidents. Second only possibly to W. who may have taken his cue from Adams when he repealed habeas corpus, virtually suspending the Constitution. That Janus image was rather suggested; the god had two faces, because the Romans understood that things ended as they began.

But with Rick Perry, America gets to begin again and bust free from the two northeastern families; Montagues and Capulets that have masqueraded as political parties these past 40 years. As Ronald Reagan said, it is morning in America. But it is getting now to high noon.