September 29, 2016 | No Comments
In his self-described “nerdy” style, former Florida governor Jeb Bush addressed a group of Harvard students on Thursday evening, delivering remarks laced with equal parts wonkish policy chatter and commentary on a presidential election cycle gone off the rails.
Bush offered his diagnosis of the current state of politics and discussed what he thinks needs to be changed generally, but also delved into the wounds that remain from the battering Donald Trump gave him during the Republican presidential primaries.
When one student mentioned the sharp-elbowed tone of the campaign, Bush joked: “Tell me about it.”
His comments came at the university’s Kennedy School of Government, where Bush will serve as a fellow this fall. He also used the stage to take a shot at Trump, who called Bush “low energy” on the campaign trail. Bush is not supporting Trump’s bid for the White House.
“Trump only talks about things being rigged when it’s not going well for him,” Bush said of Trump’s claim that the fix is in for Hillary Clinton. “Irrespective of who wins, I think, given the nature of the this campaign … the next president has an obligation, but more importantly a real opportunity, to change the culture.”
The idea of a “cultural revival” was a common theme throughout Bush’s remarks. He pointed to eras like the 1960s, which ushered in sweeping societal change.
“Politics is a circus mirror perhaps, but a mirror for our culture,” Bush said. “I think about this a lot. You can’t change your culture by going to Congress and passing a bill saying ‘we are going to change culture’ — that’s us.”
He also said the nature of politics as a sport for only the mean-spirited needs to change.
“I just went through what was a really tough political fight, and I lost and it was disappointing, but I’m not going to change who I am,” Bush said. “The idea [that] you are weak if you are warm-hearted, man, we have to stop that. That is just dangerous for our democracy.”
Some of his remarks focused on education policy, which has been his focus after leaving Florida’s governor’s mansion in 2007. Since dropping out of the presidential race, he has returned to lead the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an influential education reform group he started.
As he did when leading an overhaul of Florida’s education system while governor, Bush chided what he calls the “top down” education system, saying that a system-wide remake focused on local control is needed.
“We should not be tied to convention,” he said.
He also blasted teachers unions, which are among his top political foes. They have often sued to overturn education policies that have become part of Bush’s legacy in Florida.
“We need a stem-to-stern radical transformation of our education system,” Bush said. “A system that has 13,100 government-run politicized, unionized monopolies as the governing model … is not going to work.”
As an example he used Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which offers tax credits for contributions that fund scholarships that allow low-income students to attend private schools. The law was part of a lengthy lawsuit filed by, among others, the state’s top teachers union. It argued the program deprives public schools of taxpayer dollars that would otherwise flow through the system.
“You have moms and dads and students saying, ‘don’t take this away from me,’” Bush said of the lawsuit. “C’mon, man.”