theB2Journal

Charismatic conservative: JEB

For the past eight years, Republican John Ellis "Jeb" Bush served as the forty-third Governor of Florida. Younger brother of President George W. Bush and second son of former President George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara, naysayers speculated that Jeb was merely cashing in on his family's name and couldn't offer the strong leadership a growing Florida required ...

Oh, how very wrong his detractors were, but more on that later.

Jeb's formative years

Born in Midland, Texas, where his father operated an oil drilling company, John Ellis was known as Jeb (from his initials, "JEB") since childhood. From middle school onward, Jeb attended the Phillips Andover school in Massachusetts and, after making the honor roll in his first semester, he never missed another. School staff and friends described him as a very disciplined and focused student.

As part of his school's student exchange program to Leon, Mexico, a seventeen-year-old Jeb Bush taught English to the locals — and then met a person who would change his life forever. While attending a motorcycle race, he met a local girl named Columba Garnica Gallo.

After graduating with honors, Jeb attended the University of Texas, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Latin American Studies in 1973. It was not by coincidence that the love-smitten Bush chose to attend a Texas university near to Mexico, and it was also not by coincidence that the outstanding student took only a little more than two years to complete his four-year degree, all while earning excellent grades in the process.

After his early graduation, Bush registered for the draft, but the Vietnam War ended before his number was activated. It was then that he married Columba, his adolescent sweetheart, on February 23, 1974. After 33 years together, Jeb and Columba are still happily married and very much in love. They dote over their three children: George P., John E. "Jeb", Jr., and Noelle.

Gaining business experience

Bush hired on at an entry-level position with the Latin American-focused Texas Commerce Bank, run by Ben Love, where he assisted in drafting much of Love's communications. He did so well that in 1977, he was sent to Caracas, Venezuela, to generate new business for the bank. Bush moved his family with him and spent two years there, working in international finance. Few were surprised that the bright, personable Jeb was successful in attracting a great deal of new business to the bank, the direct result of his effective Venezuelan networking.

In 1980, Bush returned to the United States, resigned his bank position, and worked without salary on his father's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980. His father lost the Republican nomination for President that year to Ronald Reagan, but Reagan chose George H. W. Bush to be his running mate. In 1988, George H.W. Bush himself won the Republican Party's presidential nomination and was then elected president.

After the 1980 election, Bush moved his family to Dade County (now Miami-Dade), Florida. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, a Cuban immigrant and self-made American success story. Codina made his fortune in computers, then formed a new company to pursue real estate opportunities.

While earning just 40 thousand dollars in his first year with Codina when others were making hundreds of thousands, Jeb grew to become skilled in real estate and helped build a very successful property business. Impressed with the young Bush's talents, Codina offered him a partnership — a wise decision since with Jeb's help, the business rapidly grew to become one of Florida's leading real estate firms.

The energetic Bush also immersed himself in other pursuits, including working for a mobile phone company, selling fire equipment for the Alaska oil pipeline, investing his own savings in the Jacksonville Jaguars, running a shoe company that sold footwear in Panama, and selling water pumps in Nigeria. His natural talent for effective executive management would come to serve him well later in life.

Charitable interests and religious growth

After an unsuccessful run for the Florida governorship in 1994, an election he lost to Lawton Chiles by a razor-thin margin, Jeb started a non-profit organization called the Foundation For Florida's Future, formed to influence public policy at the grassroots level. He also immersed himself in the Miami Children's Hospital, the United Way of Dade County, and the Dade County Homeless Trust.

Taking his cue from John F. Kennedy, Jeb's Foundation For Florida's Future published a book that he had co-written, Profiles in Character in 1996. The book showcased ordinary people and their true stories of uncommon courage. The foundation also published and distributed policy papers, such as A New Lease on Learning: Florida's First Charter School, co-written by Bush. Jeb also wrote the foreword to another book published by the Heritage Foundation and written by Nina Shokraii Rees, School Choice 2000: What's Happening in the States.

This book so moved Bush that he co-founded the first charter, or "free choice" school in the State of Florida: Liberty City Charter School, a K-6 elementary school. The school is situated in a poverty-wracked Miami neighborhood that was in 1980 the site of the first major race riot in Florida since the 1960s. Bush's partner and school co-founder, T. Williard Fair, was a local black activist and head of the Greater Miami Urban League, and their joint dream of the Liberty City Charter School is still in operation today.

Early in his marriage and at the urging of his devoutly-Catholic wife Columba, Protestant Jeb underwent a religious conversion and became a practicing Roman Catholic. He and his wife belong to the Epiphany Catholic Church in Miami, and Jeb recently earned his rank as a Third Degree Knight of Columbus.

Political Transformation

At the urging of friends and associates, Jeb Bush entered Florida politics in populous Dade County as the county chairman of the Republican Party, and his efforts played an important role in the 1986 election of Republican Bob Martinez as governor. In return, Martinez appointed the able Bush as Florida's Secretary of Commerce. He ably served as secretary until 1988 before resigning once again to work on his father's presidential campaign. After his father's victory, the Spanish-speaking Jeb served as the campaign manager of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American to serve in Congress.

In 1994 and again at his friends' urging, he launched an unsuccessful bid for the Governor's office in an attempt to unseat incumbent and politically savvy Democrat Governor Lawton Chiles, narrowly losing by 51 to 49 percent.

Undaunted, and buoyed by the closeness of the last election against a firmly-entrenched incumbent, in 1998 Jeb Bush ran again and handily defeated Democrat opponent Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay by more than 10 percentage points to become Governor of Florida. That same year his brother George W. Bush won a landslide re-election victory for a second term as Governor of Texas, and the Bush brothers became the first siblings to govern two states at the same time since Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller governed New York and Arkansas from 1967 to 1971.

Unwavering message and leadership by example

Political partisanship aside and whether you liked him or not, Governor Jeb Bush served as a stellar example for all politicians to emulate:

It seems the excellent student learned his lessons well from the two men in his life he admired most: his father and Ronald Wilson Reagan.

During the campaign and the following eight productive years as governor, Jeb Bush did exactly that. With a clear, unwavering message and the integrity to never compromise his values, Jeb successfully maintained his overwhelming popularity in a state with more registered Democrat than Republican voters — and did so while directing significant policy changes that weren't always approved by everyone.

After crushing the Democrat opposition during his 2002 re-election bid, Jeb Bush summed it all up with characteristic, self-effacing style, "Not every Floridian embraces the ideas I advocate, but they seem to think I'm OK." This was quite an understatement, and all the so-called political pundits agreed that if Bush were not subject to Florida's term limits for governor, he would have handily won a third term in 2006.

The legacy

In addition to curbing new taxes, nurturing one of the most dynamic state economies in the nation, and maintaining a ridiculous three percent unemployment rate, Bush's main focus was on public education reform. His "A+ Plan" mandated standardized testing in Florida's public schools, eliminated social promotion, and established a system of funding public schools based on a statewide grading system using the FCAT test. This was vehemently opposed by the politically powerful teachers' union, but to no avail.

Bush spearheaded Florida's school voucher and charter school systems, especially in areas of the state with failing public schools. His visionary distance-learning Florida Virtual High School program today allows students in rural areas of the state to take Advanced Placement classes for college credit.

Throughout his governorship, Jeb Bush was a believer in emergency preparedness, no surprise in such a hurricane-prone state. But it is a pleasant surprise to note that under his direction, Florida's disaster administration, mitigation programs, sizable rainy day emergency funds, training, emergency plans, and response and recovery practices were enhanced. Under his guidance, Florida's preparedness programs were and still are routinely lauded by federal agencies as national examples.

Personal note: During and after the statewide, multiple-hurricane devastation that occurred in 2004 and then again in 2005, Governor Bush personally led the state's public assistance and recovery efforts from the hardest-hit areas. It was during those desperate times that the author met and spoke with Governor Jeb. This genial man is easy to like, projects competence and an understated confidence, and exudes a make-it-happen attitude under trying circumstances.

On the environmental front, during his tenure Jeb Bush signed landmark legislation to protect the Everglades as well as Florida's unique estuaries and coastline. Despite pressure from his presidential brother, Jeb opposed federal plans to drill for oil off the coast of Florida. However, and in part due to a public clamor in the wake of rising energy prices, in late 2005 Bush attempted to strike a compromise that would allow offshore drilling in an area that stretches 125 miles off Florida's coastline. He hoped to satisfy Floridians' concerns while giving the state legislature the power to permit yet control offshore drilling.

The future

Bush's personable nature, honesty, charismatic appeal to Florida's highly diverse group of voters, and his indisputable success as the executive of the nation's third-most populous state are now a matter of record. But lesser known is the fact that throughout his two administrations, Governor Bush was proudest of his anti-discrimination record and his belief in rewarding merit rather than across-the-board quotas. It should also be noted that during his governorship, Jeb employed more highly-qualified women, blacks, and other minorities in top-level positions than any previous Florida administration.

All of the aforementioned have prompted many to wonder about his political future. Jeb Bush is known for and has proven that he holds dear his conservative principles and stands by what he believes. But is there more on the political horizon for Jeb?

Most in the know believe that if Jeb Bush had been elected governor when he was edged out by the wily Chiles in 1994, he would have been the Bush elected to the White House in 2000, and had a much easier time of it than did his older brother. 53-year-old Jeb, however, won't go into any details about his future, except to say that, "Hey, I've got to find a job, and I'm going to concentrate on my family." Yeah, right. If a person of Jeb's character can't find a job, then none of us can.

Many talking heads have speculated that due to the perception of a "Bush Dynasty" or "Bush Fatigue," Jeb has ruled out any short-term presidential aspirations. Too bad for America ... he's a decent, honorable, intelligent man and the hands-down best of our current bunch of pretenders, but ...

I wouldn't count Jeb Bush out of America's future forever — We could use a good man like him and he's simply too valuable to waste.

© 2005 the b2 journal