The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (14 page)

But he hasn’t yet. Before he does, put down the markers to make sure everyone knows who made him turn—or dig even deeper—and why.

CHAPTER 15

Your Brother-in-law Jeb

I don’t need a last name, and you don’t need a last name. The other dynasty candidate, with just as much muscle and instant name recognition.

And even more of an exhaustion factor than your burden of tiredness.

All you need to know about Jeb came from an interview Candy Crowley did with his older brother, your husband Bill’s pal W, on December 7, 2014. The complete text is online and it is full of 41’s obvious love, esteem and affection for whom he hopes turns out to be 45. Then there is this exchange:

CROWLEY:
You’ve often referred to Bill Clinton and you talk about his relationship with your father and how it developed, and your mother as well, and he’s your brother from another mother.

(
LAUGHTER
)

CROWLEY:
What does that make Hillary Clinton to the Bush family?

BUSH:
My sister-in-law!

CROWLEY:
Interesting. And do you think that your brother could run against your sister-in-law?

BUSH:
Yeh, and I think he’d beat her.

CROWLEY:
Do you?

BUSH:
I do. I do.

CROWLEY:
She’s formidable.

BUSH:
Very much so. No question. So is he though.

CROWLEY:
So you’ll take that bet.

BUSH:
Absolutely.

CROWLEY:
Do you think she’ll run?

BUSH:
Of course, you’re not going to make it because you’re an objective newscaster.

CROWLEY:
That’s why I’m asking you.

BUSH:
Do I think she’ll run? I have no clue. I have no clue. But I know this—that like Jeb, she knows what it’s like, and she’s taking her time. She’s got a new complicating factor, and that is she’s a grandmother and, like you, and like me from the grandfather side, she’s going to understand the joys of what it’s like.

CROWLEY:
Just being available.

BUSH:
Absolutely. And it’ll enrich their lives like no other event has. And, but both folks will make—yes, she’d be a formidable candidate, no question. And both folks, Jeb and Hillary, are going to make very considered judgments.

Your decision is made, and so is Jeb’s. He would be your most formidable opponent for the same reason Romney threatened you, albeit briefly: simply because Bush and Romney have both been to the circus a few times and know, as you know, what is coming.

But former Governor Bush seems not to know, nor does his brother, that a torpedo has struck the Good Ship Jeb amidships, a torpedo named “Common Core.” In the end, I suspect this will sink his campaign unless he finds a way to persuade people of his fundamental and
passionate opposition to what Common Core has become. Common Core is a slow motion disaster, and one metastasizing as you read this, reaching out to every dining room table in the land, throwing parents into fury and teachers into confusion. It has Jeb’s trademark on it, and he seems not to understand the need to repudiate the Frankenstein monster he brought to life.

So he will probably not be opposite you. But just in case he does manage to be against Common Core after he was for it and somehow survives the conservative gantlet, prepare for that early on by denouncing Common Core, and more emphatically than he eventually will.

The late Lee Atwater famously remarked once that if your opponent is on the ground with a broken arm… step on it. Atwater was the first President Bush’s political guru and you must appropriate his advice. Jeb has everything necessary to beat you, so early on give a speech to either the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers denouncing the chaos and confusion caused by Common Core. Mix it in with all the appropriate bows and nods to the enthusiasts in the room, but make no mistake that you think Common Core poorly planned and terribly rolled out, that much work needs to be done, especially on the Math curriculum that is confounding moms and dads, and that perhaps America’s educators ought not to have trusted a tight-fisted Bush to design their curriculum overhaul.

Your “brothers-in-law” won’t be amused. But you don’t beat Achilles by carefully avoiding his heel. You aim for it with every arrow you let fly and every stroke of your sword.

Then there is the prospect of a “third Bush war in Iraq,” and this rhetorical gut-punch needs to be among the ones you throw most often. I myself questioned the former Florida governor about this on air on February 15 of this year, and I did so because it is the toughest question he can face and he needs the practice in answering it as you will be throwing it his way often if he escapes the Common Core trap and becomes the nominee:

HH: Now Governor Bush, what interests me about that is when you look forward into a possible third Bush presidency, not how the Iraq wars went or your opinion of your father’s order to invade Iraq, or your brother’s order to invade Iraq, but whether or not you’d be overly cautious about using force for fear of having a “third Bush war” occur?

JB:
No, that’s an interesting question, and I’m glad you asked it. It wouldn’t, if I was, if I decide to go forward with a race and I’m fortunate enough to go through that whole process, and God willing, win, then I would have a duty to protect the United States. And there are circumstances where a commander-in-chief, the president of the United States has to make tough decisions. And history’s full of examples of that. I wouldn’t be conflicted by any legacy issues of my family. I actually, Hugh, am quite comfortable being George Bush’s son and George Bush’s brother. It’s something that gives me a lot of comfort on a personal level, and it certainly wouldn’t compel me to act one way or the other based on the strategies that we would be implementing and the conditions that our country would be facing.

HH: So a conservative who is a strong Defense conservative would not have to be hesitant to worry that you would be reluctant to use force anywhere, but especially in the Muslim world?

JB:
I don’t think there’s anything that relates to what my dad did or what my brother did that would compel me to think one way or the other. I think that history’s a good guide for our country. And the simple fact is you start with the premise that America’s role in the world is a force for good, not for bad things to happen, you’ll have, lessen the likelihood of having to use military force around the world. America’s foreign policy is more successful when we’re clear about who we’re supporting in terms of our allies, and that our enemies fear us a little bit rather than take advantage of us, to create insecurity that then compels the world and the United States to react. I think a better solution is to have a forceful foreign policy where we’re supportive of our friends, where there’s no light between our closest allies, like Israel, like our neighborhood, like NATO. These are the alliances that have kept us safe. And the more that people are assured of that, the more likely it is that we’ll live in a peaceful world.

A fine couple of answers, those, but will they wear? They might.

Jeb Bush—without warning of what was coming, for I do not
telegraph my questions to friends or foes—instinctively knew that he had to answer that he would do what was in the best interests of the country whatever history had said about past wars or what talking heads would say about future ones as they unfolded. He knew he couldn’t be chained to the past in any way, and he declared as much on the spot. Great instincts on the part of that very experienced fellow. Not that you shouldn’t try again to get under his skin. But his skin is thick, and his experience is as deep as yours. Remember that. Cheap tricks won’t work as they might on a rookie.

Our interview on February 25, 2015 ended this way. Note how he closes it:

HH: Well then, let’s look at, assume you are the nominee and you’d be up against former Secretary of State Clinton. That would be a 69 year old Clinton versus a 64 year old Bush. Now…

JB:
Hey, hey, buddy, hang on now. Sorry, I’m 62. 62.

HH: (laughing) 62, sorry. Is that a little bit like Magic versus Bird playing one on one now? I mean, isn’t that…

JB:
I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m an idea-driven guy. I think campaigns need to be about the future, and they need to be hopeful and optimistic. And they need to embrace technologies in ways that allows you to have two-way communication with potential voters. And a campaign that’s going to be successful for conservatives is to campaign outside of one’s comfort zone.

HH: And then the last question, Governor, what’s the message to the newly-emerging democracies, that the world’s oldest democracy keeps recycling Bushes and Clintons and Clintons and Bushes? Does it send the wrong message to the Nigerias and the Indias of the world about dynasty?

JB:
If the campaigns are about, if the campaign’s about a dynasty, I’m not sure that that’s going to work. If it’s about how you advance ideas that will help people rise up, then it will be an inspiration for others. And that’s what we need to do. We need to be talking about the future by fixing a few really big, complicated things, to allow the middle to rise, and for people stuck at the bottom to rise up as well. And we can do it. That’s the good news, is the
inspiration of America is going to be when we start growing at 4% per year rather than 2% per year. We will inspire the world to emulate us.

Jeb Bush knows you will want the dynasty card played because he’s a third and very different Bush, and you are the same old Bill-and-Hillary act. He’s also suggesting, ever so slightly, that while he is in “the best shape of his life,” well, perhaps not all of his opponents are. They know this game, Madame Secretary. Specifically, Governor Bush knows this game, very, very well.

You will be working overtime to blend three Bushes into one. You should talk about “Bush wars” and “Bush economics” and “Bush appointees” and “recycled Bush rhetoric.” This will work only in the GOP primaries, so deploy it before those primaries begin. As in tomorrow and every day thereafter.

You should know as well that Jeb Bush plays to win. Just as I went to press on March 30, 2015 with this manuscript, the former Florida governor came by my California studios. You were in the news again for your, well, unusual arrangement with Sidney Blumenthal, and of course for your legacy in the Middle East. Note this exchange:

HH: Will it be fair, if you’re the nominee and campaigning against Hillary Clinton, to argue “You broke it, you bought it” with regards to Libya and all the other chaos that swirls around the region?

JB:
Yeah, no, I think she can’t do the Heisman on the first four years of the Obama foreign policy. She’ll try. I mean, she’s going to, look, this is very Clintonian, I think, to figure out a way to get out of a mess. But she was Secretary of State of the first administration. And while some of this disruption and then all the stuff playing out right now didn’t exist in the first four years, its roots were there. The pullback began then. The reset with Russia, the discussions with Syria, the red line, all these things created the beginnings of what we’re now seeing. And so…

HH: We’ve got one minute left, and I promised your people a half hour, so I’ll let you go. What about her server and wiping it clean? Or you can stay around if you want to talk about that longer. But what about that?

JB:
I don’t know. I don’t know. I put my money on Trey Gowdy, for starters. That guy is a superstar. He respects the rule of law. He’ll be a gentleman about it, but he’s not going to give up on this notion that she needs to come clean with what she knows about that information and other things for sure.

“And other things,” Madame Secretary. “Coming clean,” Madame Secretary.

These are problems. The time to hang Sid out to dry and call on him to take the ultimate fall is upon you. If you want to be president, he will be pushed under the bus by the end of the year, and in such a spectacular fashion that no one will ever have any worry that Sidney Blumenthal will be around to make Chuck Colson in Nixon’s first term seem like an amateur.

CHAPTER 16

The Big Guy

I introduced Meg Whitman before the California delegation at the Tampa Bay Republican convention in 2012, and she in turn introduced New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to a breakfast gathering memorably captured by the
New York Times
’ Mark Leibovich in one of his essays in the paper, subsequently collected in
Citizens of the Green Room
. What Leibovich could not have seen that morning was the scene in that particular green room, a holding room off the stage where Whitman, Christie retainers, contributors and I gathered.

These are the moments that tell. If you let them. It is has been my habit to stand back from the scrum and observe. As I worked hard for the ill-fated Meg campaign, I had been in a few such rooms with her, and the eBay billionaire turned HP CEO is as wonderful with a small crowd as Christie is with a large one, but their personas invert in the opposite settings. Christie in a crowded room: terrific. In a small room, not so much. He expects to be approached and he expects to be praised. He is the proverbial “big guy,” with all the strengths and weaknesses of that “big guy,” the blocking tackle, the heavyweight champ, the tough-talking, straight-ahead, union-busting, Springsteen-loving Jersey prosecutor.