It’s election night, November 2, 2010, and Jeb Bush is all alone on stage at Marco Rubio’s victory rally. As supporters and photographers await the arrival of the new conservative star, Bush takes his substantial six-foot-three-inch frame a few steps toward the audience, clapping and cajoling them to join him in a chant: “Mar-co! Mar-co! Mar-co!” He moves stage left, where the cameras are waiting, still alone, still chanting, like a helicopter parent cheering from the sidelines. Finally, several awkward minutes later, Rubio emerges, enabling Bush to slink toward the back.

Such public shows of affection have occurred frequently over the last couple of years. “I have a special place in my heart for him,” Bush told Charlie Rose in June 2012. “It’s hard to describe the pride I feel for his incredible success.”

When Rose asked Bush about his own decision not to run for president that year, his paternal façade began to crack. “I’ve got personal reasons,” he said, blinking furiously, “family reasons that overwhelmed any other considerations.” He continued, speaking rapidly: “I don’t know, this may be a Bush trait, maybe it isn’t, but I made the decision, and I made the decision. I moved on.”

Rubio on Bush: "He's practically Cuban, just taller."

But Bush hasn’t moved on. In early March, he went on NBC’s “Today” show and confirmed he was again considering the financial and familial implications of a White House run. “I won’t [rule it out], but I’m not going to declare today, either,” Bush said. He also muddied his stance on a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, breaking with his more lenient past position and looking increasingly serious about 2016. Bush has much to consider—the baggage attached to his last name, his willingness to subject his gilded reputation to a grotesque primary process, his own sons’ electoral ambitions, the privacy of his nonpolitical wife and daughter. But he must also untangle his sense of loyalty and obligation to Rubio, because what Bush decides will have major implications for the career of the political superstar he has so generously nurtured.





“I don’t think Marco would want to run against Jeb in a primary, the way their relationship is,” J. C. Planas, a former South Florida legislator who has worked with both men, told me. “But you never know, just because of the way things work. If Jeb became president, more than likely it means Marco probably never would.”