Jeb Bush, Colu and the Oval Office

Several articles appeared this week on former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.), his wife Columba and their family. They tell the story of Bush more intimately than anything thus far learned, suggesting what kind of individual he is and what kind of president he might be.

There is some controversy as his wife is foreign-born, has run up exceptional debt on occasion but nothing in context with the overall wealth of the Bush family. There have been kid issues; drugs and minor arrests with the children, that could potentially cast a negative pall on a campaign. But after reading the articles, I thought more of Bush and his wife than I did before.

{mosads}Bush was to the manor born, of the archetypal New England gentry which characteristically sent the boys off to the exceptional New England prep schools. But from Phillips Academy he diverged from the easy path and went instead as an exchange student to León in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, where he met his wife. He was an underachiever at Phillips Academy, says a New York Times article, but meeting Columba “made Jeb more diligent.”

The first journey made as a young person often becomes a lifelong interest. Bush majored in Latin American studies at University of Texas at Austin, is fluent in Spanish and later worked in Venezuela in banking. It might be fair to say that his view today on immigration comes from long personal experience; it is heart-based as well as head-based, which is a rare combination. It is also fair to say that Bush, born and reared in Midland, Texas, has authentic Texas chops and unlike his father, George H.W. Bush, does not have to prove that he is “really a Texan.”

Jeb’s wife is Roman Catholic and Bush was reared Episcopalian. This is interesting to us New Englanders as the conflict which rose to history in the “Kennedy half-century” was early on class struggle between Irish working-class Catholics and Protestant wealth and management; Catholic vs. Protestant, going back to President Kennedy and Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-Mass.). Bush’s conversion to Roman Catholicism would have been seen by my grandmother as total victory for Irish Catholics.

It means instead that that historic contention has passed out of existence and that Bush is his own man. Better yet, it means he is a free man.

In the Times article, several things which relate to his marriage and religion may act as the microcosm to explain the greater Jeb Bush macrocosm. Within a few years of his marriage, he ran for governor of Florida and failed. In some disappointment, he turned to religion; his wife’s religion, and Bush converted to Catholicism. The report says that it pleased his wife to have one religion in the family.

There is quiet heroism to this for a man so representative of an American founding tradition to leave behind his religion to avoid a “house divided” and make his family whole. As it was at Phillips Academy, the choice was ancien regime or his personal path and family. He made the holistic choice to make his family one. Likewise the article says that Columba, called “Colu” by friends, didn’t particularly like to cook, so in the early marriage, Jed did the cooking. Again, keeping the family ritually whole and one.

This is what a man does to find the center in his life. That an individual like that hopes to be president one day may auspicious in this regard, even rare.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.