Jeb Bush struggles with George W’s legacy on Iraq question

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, yet to declare his presidential candidacy but expected to make an announcement shortly, is struggling to escape the shadow of the legacy of his older brother George W.

Starting out in December on a possible presidential bid, the brother and son of former presidents claimed he would be "my own man", yet his response this week to a question on whether he, like his brother, would have gone to war in Iraq in 2003 – and three flip-flopping follow-ups – made him appear confused and weak.

Asked by Fox News interviewer Megyn Kelly whether he would have invaded "knowing what we know now", he said: "I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence that they got."

He later clarified his remarks, again to Fox News on Tuesday, saying he misinterpreted Kelly’s question. “Knowing what we know now, clearly there were mistakes as it related to faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the war,” he said.

On Wednesday, at a town-hall meeting in Nevada, he dodged the issue, saying that "talking about hypotheticals" did a disservice to those who served in Iraq. Bush later told reporters: "Given the power of looking back and having that . . . of course anybody would have made different decisions."

In Arizona on Thursday, Bush answered differently again, saying definitively: “Knowing what we know now, I would have not engaged. I would have not gone into Iraq.”

Advice

Bush has acknowledged that he seeks foreign policy advice from his brother, among others, including neoconservative hawks who worked in the

George W Bush

White House

.

The two-term former governor must walk a tightrope. He must appeal to the conservative Republicans who have an outsized influence in picking the party's presidential nominee – particularly in states that nominate early, such as Iowa and South Carolina– and later win over middle-ground voters, many of whom remain implacably opposed to the Iraq war, in the general election to take the White House.

This is the tricky high-wire act that legacy candidates, such as Bush (and Hillary Clinton), must perform, particularly against rivals such as Florida senator Marco Rubio (43), whose campaign is casting him as a 21st-century candidate who looks forward, not back.

Rubio claims to have the most foreign policy experience of the Republican candidates, given his membership of the Senate foreign relations and intelligence committees. On Iraq, he is more unequivocal than Bush, saying on Wednesday that with the benefit of hindsight about flawed intelligence, he would not have supported the invasion of Iraq. He gave backhanded support to the former president, based on the evidence he was presented with.

“Not only would I not have been in favour of it, President Bush would not have been in favour of it,” he said during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Favourite

The conservative favourite, Wisconsin governor

Scott Walker

, who is polling strongly in the first nominating state of Iowa, has stumbled on the foreign policy front, drawing scorn for saying that his battles with trade unions in his home state have prepared him well for dealing with Islamic State.

He repeatedly dodged questions about Islamic State, Ukraine and other foreign policy issues on a trip to London in February, saying he didn't want to criticise the president while on a trade mission on foreign soil.

The libertarian Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, is most at odds with the party's foreign policy hawks, though he has shifted from isolationism to reluctant interventionism and even recently proposed increasing defence spending. This is perhaps driven by polls showing that the American public wants a more robust interventionist approach.

The one candidate who has remained silent on foreign policy in their campaign is the contender with the most experience in this area: the Democrat Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama’s former secretary of state. Her vote for the Iraq war in 2003, while still a senator, will hang over her, much as George W Bush’s legacy will over his brother.