Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who frequently laments the media’s concentration on his Republican rival, Donald Trump, singled out the front-runner Wednesday for obscuring a key foreign policy debate in his party.
Bush, in response to a question about how the presidential election would determine his party’s trajectory in the years ahead, said the attention swirling around Trump has blocked a needed discussion about how Republicans should approach foreign policy after eight years in exile from the White House. Trump, Bush said, had “stymied” that discussion.
“Banning all Muslims is not a foreign policy, is not a serious proposal,” Bush said, referring to Trump’s statement earlier this month. “In fact, a serious proposal would be aligning ourselves with the traditional, moderate Arab world, because without them we’re not going to be able to create stability and destroy ISIS.”
During the hourlong discussion with the Globe’s editorial board on Wednesday and in a brief interview afterward, Bush repeatedly invoked Trump’s name, often to bemoan how much attention Trump receives. That balancing act is emblematic of the dilemma facing the Republican pack of a dozen current candidates who have chased the real estate magnate for months. Echoing another theme from the campaign trail, Bush told journalists they have been manipulated by Trump.
“You guys are the violin and he’s the violinist, and he’s just playing you like nobody’s business,” he said.
Later on Wednesday, Bush’s campaign confirmed they would be redeploying staffers to New Hampshire, a crucial state for the candidate but one where he has long been mired in single digits in the polls. A Bush aide said Wednesday that the campaign would have about 40 staffers there, adding to what is already the largest paid staff in the state.
The Des Moines Register reported that Bush’s campaign was canceling its television ads in Iowa, shifting resources to paid staff in early-voting states. Bush’s campaign manager, Danny Diaz, told the paper that Bush was not withdrawing from Iowa, where he is fifth in polling.
With less than five weeks until the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses, the two-term governor and son and brother of presidents has been trying to position himself as the candidate with the experience and intellectual heft to handle the White House.
In an implicit dig at his former protégé and now rival, US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Bush said he is alone among the candidates in holding a consistent stance on immigration. And he said he’s the only candidate with a serious, detailed proposal to reform federal entitlement programs, though New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has also outlined a plan.
Increasingly, Bush has been emphasizing foreign policy and national security, arguing he is the only candidate equipped to defeat the Islamic State.
He has joined Trump and others in the GOP primary in blasting President Obama for weak management of the US role abroad. After nearly two full terms under Obama, and still uncertain how to reconcile the foreign policy legacy of former president George W. Bush, large blocs of the Republican Party are at odds over what its philosophy should be.
While some Republicans, like US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, have urged a retreat from “military adventurism,” Bush is among those advocating a more robust use of force.
“We got attacked,” he said Wednesday, explaining the decline of his party’s isolationist wing. “I think the whole conversation changed with Paris. The caliphate was a — it happened at warp speed, and the withdrawal of America precipitated it. It wasn’t that we created it, but we precipitated it.”
“The voids are being filled,” he said. Americans, Bush said, have developed a “hyper-awareness of our neglect of national security issues.”
Bush also acknowledged a roiling unrest in the electorate, which many political handicappers believe has worked to his detriment. As Bush has hewed toward a more moderate approach, candidates projecting an angrier profile, like Trump, have thrived. Trump has routinely mocked Bush, even as other candidates have climbed more aggressively in the polls.
“People are legitimately angry, but they should want solutions, rather than just have some people that identify with their anger and their angst,” Bush said. “And generally that’s the case, as you get closer to elections people start figuring out who can sit behind the big desk.”
Bush also offered an explanation for his seemingly tortured answers to a question in May about whether his brother was right to order the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He said he had “totally misunderstood” the question during an interview with Fox News.
“I stumbled a bit, because I don’t want to be critical of my brother; I apologize,” he said, noting that he had later acknowledged the invasion was “a mistake.”
The “lessons” from the US venture in Iraq, Bush said, include the need for “iron-clad” intelligence and “a strategy for security and stability, and an exit strategy.”
He also appeared to chalk up the question to an interest in Bush family psychodrama.
“I know you guys love the Bush folklore. It seems to be a fascination. I’ll provide a little therapy for everybody here,” said Bush, before offering his answer.
James Pindell contributed. O’Sullivan can be reached at jim.osullivan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JOSreports.