In drive to be 45th president, JEB! faces legacies of 43rd and 41st

(Washington Post) - BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — Jeb Bush came here this weekend to bask in the glow of his extended family. His sister called him “remarkable and brilliant,” a president-in-waiting. His mother said she had changed her mind, that it was time after all for another Bush in the White House. And his father, the 41st president, cheered him on.

Yet even as Bush embraced his dynastic family as relatives, he tried not to get saddled by them as politicians. When a reporter asked how he might have handled differently his brother’s unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush said: “I won’t talk about the past; I’ll talk about the future. . . . It’s not about re-litigating anything in the past.”

But it won’t be so easy to escape the burdens of being a Bush. Wrestling with how to handle the legacies of the two previous, controversial presidents in the family, Bush and his advisers say one of his foremost challenges will be to establish his own political identity distinct from theirs, just as he did in two successful campaigns for governor in Florida.

The campaign stickers his supporters wore back then, and which they are sporting anew these days, say “Jeb!” with no hint of the Bush name that comes after.     Read more.