Everything old is new again this season: torture debates, war in Iraq, and that fruitcake your aunt "makes" every year. (It's the same one, right?) So too with the Republican field for president in 2016: Two of the names at the top of the list right now are a Bush (Jeb, this time) and a Romney (the same one).

It's obviously early for either to make a decision, and there are strong reasons to think both might not run. One way to figure out what they might decide is to conduct a straw poll on how insiders think they're leaning, by talking to as many confidants and family members as possible. That's useful but not dispositive, since the act of publicly commenting is often intended to influence the choice as much as to describe private discussions.

That's what makes Joshua Green and Miles Weiss's Businessweek story this week so valuable: It gives a concrete reason why Bush might not want—or be able—to run, which is his growing private-equity network and the difficulty he'd face in extricating himself:

His flurry of ventures doesn’t suggest someone preparing to run for president, according to a dozen fund managers, lawyers, and ­private-placement agents who were ­apprised of his recent activities by Bloomberg Businessweek. Most private equity funds have a life span of 10 years. While it isn’t impossible that Bush could bail on his investors so soon after taking their money, “that would be unusual,” says Steven Kaplan, a private equity expert at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. One fundraiser for private equity adds that normally you’d be winding down such businesses, rather than expanding them, if you were going to run.

Bush opted for finance, despite the political liabilities, for the same reason most people do: He wanted to make a lot of money. While he is better off than the vast majority of Americans, he has lagged his own family in earnings.