Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is considering a 2016 presidential campaign, is seeking to distinguish his views on foreign policy from those of his father and brother, two former presidents.
But he's getting most of his ideas from nearly two dozen people, most of whom previously worked for George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Bush is scheduled to speak at midday Wednesday before nearly 800 people at an event hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a nonpartisan think tank that is home to several veterans of previous presidential administrations.
He is expected to embrace the legacies of his father, George H. W. Bush and his brother, George W. Bush, by saying that he has been "lucky" to have family members "who both have shaped America’s foreign policy from the Oval Office."
"I recognize that as a result, my views will often be held up in comparison to theirs’— sometimes in contrast to theirs’," he will add, according to prepared remarks provided by his aides in advance. "I love my father and my brother. I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make. But I am my own man — and my views are shaped by my own thinking and own experiences. Each president learns from those who came before — their principles … their adjustments. One thing we know is this: Every president inherits a changing world … and changing circumstances."
But as he prepares to launch a presidential campaign, Bush will be relying on at least 21 veteran foreign policy and diplomatic experts, including former secretaries of homeland security and state, former CIA directors and national security advisers.
The list includes two former secretaries of homeland security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, who worked for George W. Bush; two former secretaries of state, James Baker and George Shultz, who served under George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan; two former CIA directors, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, who also served during the second Bush presidency; and former attorney general Michael Mukasey.
Others on the list include two former World Bank presidents, Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz. There's also John Negroponte, a former United Nations ambassador and the first director of national intelligence; Stephen Hadley, who was George W. Bush's national security adviser; and Meghan O'Sullivan, who worked with Hadley and Bush on the second Iraq war.
As The Washington Post first reported on Tuesday, many conservatives are "waiting to see how [Bush] splits the difference between what he perceives — or what his advisers perceive — to be the pluses and minuses of his father’s and brother’s administrations," said Gary J. Schmitt, a former Reagan administration official now with the American Enterprise Institute.
In his remarks on Wednesday, aides say Bush is expected to broadly outline his views on global affairs, delivering a message similar to one he delivered in December when he addressed the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC in Miami — a group strongly opposed to Obama's proposed changes in U.S.-Cuba relations. But he also plans to take questions from the audience, which could prompt more candid responses from a candidate-in-waiting who has spent most of his time in recent weeks meeting with campaign donors behind closed doors and not engaging people in public.
In his speech, Bush is expected to address why American leadership "is more necessary than ever. American leadership projected consistently and grounded in principle has been a benefit to the world."
1 comment:
Write comments