The dangerous precedents of a Jeb Bush presidency

When Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.) called it quits last week, he dropped a “truth bomb” on the other Republican nomination seekers. On his way out the door, he turned and said:

Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top of the field. With that in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately.

I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner. This is fundamentally important to the future of the party and — ultimately — to the future of our country.

Walker is right: The crowded field has split the sane people vote into 14 pieces and allowed the ultimate fringe candidate to rise to the top.

The question is, who should drop out next?

Donald Trump could drop out and make things easy for everyone. Trump is the kudzu candidate: His candidacy is an invasive weed of pessimism, anger and ad hominem attacks. When his attacks aren’t the basest personal nonsense — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)’s or Carly Fiorina’s looks, Bush’s wife’s ethnicity — they are the stuff of fact-abusing Democratic National Committee emails. But his most ardent supporters are willing to break out the pom-poms for anything he says, does or believes, so he is going to be in this race for a long time, unfortunately.

Bush should be the one to withdraw — not just to stop Trump, but to protect American exceptionalism.

Bush was born with a presidential spoon in his mouth. The establishment choice. The name you know. He’s doing well enough in the polls to pull out a victory, and he certainly won’t run into any cash-flow problems.

{mosads}Every current living Republican to serve as president is a Bush. Is that how it should remain in perpetuity? Why not? The infrastructure is there. The donors are there. The Bush name seems to be a powerful path to the White House. But should it be? Every election we hear Republican after Republican compare themselves to President Reagan. If a Republican makes a mistake or holds a view considered too liberal by the base, the only escape hatch is that Reagan did it too or Reagan believed the same thing.

If one of Reagan’s sons were running for president, he wouldn’t have to go around assuring everyone that he was his own man. Nobody would want him to be his own man! They’d all want him to be Dutch II. Nothing would befit our current culture more than a sequel or reboot of a White House classic.

No Republican candidate compares themselves to a Bush — they try to separate themselves from Bushes. When someone tosses a Bush comparison at them, they do their best impression of the Heisman trophy and give it the stiff arm. If the first two are underwhelming, why do we need a trilogy?

Great men in American history set precedents that didn’t benefit them personally but helped create American exceptionalism.

George Washington could have served as president for the rest of his life. There were no term limits back then. Instead, he served two terms and walked away, allowing power to peacefully transfer from one leader to another. We take that for granted in this country in 2015, but what a rare and beautiful thing it was in 1797. John Adams wrote “The sight of the sun setting and another rising (though less splendid) was a novelty.” That transition of power set a precedent that came to define the exceptional nature of the American system.

Adams was defeated in a nasty election after one term as president. The electors voted to replace Adams the Federalist with Thomas Jefferson the Democratic-Republican. As partisanship goes, Adams believed the ideology of the Democratic-Republicans was a danger to the union. Even in that belief, Adams, commander in chief of the Army, allowed for the peaceful transition of power from one political party to another. Another precedent set that would come to be a taken-for-granted part of the American way.

Bush has the opportunity to be like those Founding Fathers and set an important precedent. He could say, “I have all the resources to keep the presidency in the Bush family again, but that goes against the ethos of the American Revolution. It goes against the spirit of American democracy. The presidency is not meant to be passed monarchy-style from father to son to brother.”

Bush can serve his country best by stepping aside. He knows that. His own mother, Barbara Bush, said in 2013 when all the 2016 speculation started, “We’ve had enough Bushes.”

Jeb Bush should listen to his mother and bow out. If not, primary voters should listen to her and cast their vote against the informal monarchy a political dynasty imposes on us.

Zipperer is assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College.