WASHINGTON: While White House hopeful Jeb Bush makes his candidacy official on Monday, he has run a de facto race for six months, one that has yet to meet backers’ high hopes.

For Bush, the former Florida governors’ political pedigree as son and brother of two former presidents could end up as either a blessing or a curse.

His last name guarantees him the highest visibility of any of the many Republicans in the field. But while US media and polls anointed him his party’s early frontrunner for 2016, he has not yet lived up to the hype.

Back in December, when he announced he was exploring a presidential bid, there were signs Bush would handily dominate the Republican competition, but that has not proved true.

There was talk, fueled by aides speaking privately to reporters and fundraisers, that the main pro-Bush outside spending group was on track to raise a historic $100 million by the end of June, confirmation that he was scooping up support from many billionaire donors.

But a recent widely circulated The Washington Post story citing two individuals close to his campaign said the Right to Rise super PAC (Political Action Committee) could fall well short of the nine-digit threshold.

Bush waded into a quagmire last month when he repeatedly waffled over whether he would have authorised an invasion of Iraq.

The series of bungled on-air responses, while potentially damaging for Bush in their own right, highlighted what will likely be one of the candidate’s distracting challenges: overcoming the legacy of his brother George W. Bush and his unpopular Iraq policy.

“I hope that the message will be a hopeful, optimistic one. It won’t dwell too much on the past,” Bush said on Friday in Tallinn, Estonia, during a trip to Europe before his campaign launch.

Turbulent times

Amplifying the pre-campaign turbulence, Bush announced last week he was shuffling his team, reportedly naming operative Danny Diaz as his campaign manager instead of David Kochel, an Iowa strategist who was widely seen as preparing for the job.

“There are some real problems for Jeb,” conservative columnist Erick Erickson wrote in TownHall.com.

“First, there are too many cooks in the kitchen, who profit even if he loses,” Erickson said of the many advisers Bush has scooped up in early months, in part to prevent them from joining rival candidates.

“Second, his last name is an anchor. Third, his post-gubernatorial rhetoric seemingly deviates from his gubernatorial record, which is objectively solid and probably more conservative than George W. Bush’s record in Texas.”

Dwelling on past?

Bush’s Florida record has impressed many, but he left office eight years ago. And grass-roots conservatives have expressed scepticism, saying he has not since put forward a compelling conservative message.

Two issues could keep core conservatives away: his support for comprehensive immigration reform, which places him to the left of virtually all Republicans in the field on the issue, and his backing of Common Core, a set of national education standards loathed by conservatives.

Evidence of Bush’s struggle is apparent in Iowa, the state that votes first in the primaries and caucuses which determine the party nominees, and where in a poll last month he finished seventh among declared or potential candidates.

Nationally, Bush is bunched at the top of most polls, but he is not the dominant figure in the race that many had expected.

In a RealClearPolitics poll average, he leads with 11.3 per cent. But six other Republicans are within just four percentage points, including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who topped the Iowa poll.

Fellow Floridian and US Senator Marco Rubio, 44, who has shot from the back of the pack to the front, has cast himself as one in a new generation of politicians who represent the Washington establishment.

Bush, while never serving in Washington as a politician, may have trouble casting off the charge that he is merely a relative of presidents.

Bush no doubt is personable as he meets with voters, seeking to connect with Americans and convince that he is, as he said early this year, “my own man”. “I need to share my heart, to show a little bit about my life experience,” Bush said in a 90-second campaign-style video released on Friday.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2015

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