MIAMI — JAMES BAKER can take credit for two presidencies and one vice presidency in the Bush family.

So it’s a tad ungracious for a Bush to take Baker to task.

At first Jeb Bush tried to distance himself from Baker distantly. He had his spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell, send an email to reporters the day after Baker — one of his foreign policy advisers and his dad’s best friend, campaign manager and secretary of state — gave President Obama some bipartisan backup on Israel. Speaking to the liberal Israel advocacy group, J Street, Baker faulted the “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship” surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu. Baker’s criticism of the abrasive Israeli leader he once banned from the State Department sparked a furor among Republicans who want a loyalty oath on support for the Jewish state.

Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the neocon enforcers who agitated for W.’s blighted invasion of Iraq, threw down the tweet gauntlet the next morning: “James Baker & J Street. The anti-Israel pre-Reaganite GOP meets the anti-Israel post-Clinton left.” He also tweeted: “Whether Jeb disavows James Baker, & how quickly and strongly, could be an oddly important early moment in GOP race.”

An email from Jeb’s nascent campaign crew based here in Florida was not going to cut it. So Jeb personally groveled to his skeptical base on Thursday in Texas, Meerkatting himself, telling Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio that Baker “has a different view. I did not believe it was appropriate to go speak to J Street, a group that basically has anti-Israeli sentiments, but I have a vast array of people advising me, and I’m honored that Jim Baker is doing so. The fact that I have people that I might not agree with on every subject advising me shows leadership, frankly. I don’t think we need monolithic thinking here.”