If Republicans are smart, they’ll do everything in their power to avoid this debate. First, because they want to portray Hillary as running for Barack Obama’s third term, not her husband’s, since the Obama legacy is trickier to defend. Second, because the 2016 GOP nominee needs to embody change, which is hard to do when you’re depicted as George W. Bush. Third, because Bill Clinton is about 20 points more popular than Bush, and that’s highly unlikely to change over the next two years.

The one Republican presidential candidate who can’t avoid this debate is Jeb, a man who is known to the vast majority of Americans only as George W. Bush’s brother. Running him in 2016 is like nominating a close relative of Jefferson Davis as the Democratic Party’s nominee in 1872 or nominating a prominent member of Herbert Hoover’s cabinet to represent the GOP in 1948: It dredges up a past the party desperately needs to transcend.

The fact that Republican elites are so excited about a Jeb candidacy suggests that they don’t understand how large a shadow George W. Bush still casts over their party. Inside the GOP establishment, the Bushes represent responsible conservatism. But for many other Americans—especially Millennials—they represent economic meltdown and unwinnable war.

When Bill Clinton ran in 1992, he tried mightily to convince Americans that the negative stereotypes about Democrats left over from Jimmy Carter’s presidency did not apply to him. That’s what Republicans need in 2016—a candidate who scrambles Americans’ stereotypes about the GOP by doing things George W. Bush never would. Right now, for all his flaws, Rand Paul is the only contender really trying.

For Jeb Bush, it’s virtually impossible. You can’t easily Sister Souljah your own brother. And if you can’t, as Hillary Clinton’s New America speech showed, you’re walking right into the debate she wants to have.

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