George W. Bush: Jeb has a problem: 'Me'

CHICAGO — Jeb Bush’s candidacy has a problem, says brother George.

“Me.”


“It’s an easy line to say, ‘Haven’t we had enough Bushes?’ After all, even my mother said, ‘Yes,’” the former president told an audience of 7,000 health IT experts here on Wednesday.

“That’s why you won’t see me out there, and he doesn’t need to defend me, and he’s totally different from me. The role of family is not to be a political adviser or a policy adviser — there are plenty of those around — the role is to say, ‘Hey man, I love you.’

“The president needs people around him who are there to say they want to help. Imagine if instead Laura had been saying to me, ‘What the hell did you get us into this for?’ You’re living in a museum. It’s cold. It’s not your furniture. It’s Jefferson’s furniture.”

“My two girls had no desire to see me run for office. Their response was, ‘You’re not as good as you think you are; you’re going to lose.’ And when that didn’t’ work, ‘You’re going to ruin our life.’”

“So I said to Jeb, ‘Hang in there; you can do the job. Will you win? I hope so but I don’t know. But if he does he’d be a damn good president I’ll tell you that.”

The elder Bush said the campaign trail will be grueling — as it should be — but his brother has an edge.

“It’s going to be a hard test for everyone, but it should be. You want to see these candidates under pressure, see them fail and succeed so you have a better idea how they’ll handle the pressures of the job. Jeb has actually run something, called a state. That’s a skill that comes in handy where you’re in charge of a very complex multifaceted organization.”

The news media attending the event, part of the annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, were not allowed to take pictures, videos or even notes if they watched Bush inside the auditorium where he spoke. And a feed to the conference newsroom was cut off at the last minute, forcing reporters to dash to an overflow hall.

Bush created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in 2004, which later helped run the $30 billion federal incentive program to get hospitals and doctors to use electronic health records.