The 43rd president says he ‘has no clue where Jeb’s head is now’ in his decision to run but favors his chances over ‘sister-in-law’ Hillary Clinton

Former president George W Bush has said he wants his brother, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, to run for president in 2016. In an interview broadcast on CNN on Sunday, the 43rd president said: “He knows I want him to run, if I need to reiterate it I will. Run, Jeb.”

Jeb Bush is among a crowded field of presumed candidates for the Republican nomination, and speculation over whether he will run to succeed both his older brother and his father, George HW Bush (No41), in the White House has become a popular sport among political observers.

Such speculation has extended to the Bush family itself. Matriarch Barbara Bush has said Jeb should not run; Jeb’s son, the newly elected Texas land commissioner George P Bush, has said he is “moving forward”.

In April, Jeb Bush himself said he would decide on a run by the end of the year.

George W Bush was speaking in a wide-ranging interview to promote his recent book, 41: A Portrait of My Father. Asked why his family supposedly did not discuss “the family business” – running for the highest office – among themselves, as he claims in his book, Bush said: “Jeb knows what he’s doing. I presume you’re leading to that.”

Host Candy Crowley was indeed leading to that, although she detoured extensively around W’s feelings for HW, who is now 90 and in delicate health.

Asked, eventually, if Jeb Bush’s family was ready for the kind of scrutiny that accompanies a presidential run – a concern George W Bush discusses in relation to his father and himself in his book – the former president said: “I think that’s what he’s trying to figure out.

“When you’re weighing the presidency you think, ‘Do I fear success?’ ‘Can I handle it if I win?’ … The other thing is do you fear failure, and Jeb doesn’t, and nor does he fear success.

“He’s seen what it’s like to be the son of a president, he’s seen what it’s like to be the brother of a president, and therefore he is not rushing into running for the presidency. I have no clue where his head is now. I do know he is trying to answer that very question you just asked – about his family.”

Bush said his brother had not called him to discuss the decision.



Bush was asked about his brother’s perceived moderacy, indicated by his stance on immigration reform, an issue on which he is distrusted by the ascendant conservative wing of the Republican party. Jeb Bush is on record as saying many illegal immigrants come to the US to be with their families as “an act of love”. Bush said he thought Jeb was a “compassionate conservative” like himself.

Jeb Bush also said, in Washington on Monday, that a centrist GOP nominee should “lose the primary to win the general without violating your principles”.

“I didn’t call him to say, ‘What do you mean?’” Bush said, when asked if he thought such remarks had damaged his brother’s chances. “I hope it didn’t mean that he’s not going to run, that it was a signal. He’s not a guy who sends signals. He’ll say yes or no.”



Asked about his feelings of affinity for his Democratic predecessor in the presidency, Bill Clinton, which have prompted him to call the 42nd president his “brother from another mother”, Bush said it made the presumptive Democratic candidate for 2016, Hillary Clinton, his “sister-in-law”.

Bush was asked if he thought his brother could thus run against his sister-in-law. “Yeah,” he said, “and I think he’d beat her.”

Bush dismissed as “psychobabble” comments in reviews of his book about a presumed need to prove himself to his father or to history, specifically over Iraq and his failure to write about it.



Asked about current US-led strikes on Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq and Syria, Bush said he was “absolutely” in support of the policy.