Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida, has admitted in retrospect that he should have run for US president this year.
“There’s a window of opportunity, in life, and for all sorts of reasons this was probably my time,” he said in interview on CBS News today.
Mr Bush, the younger brother of George W. and the son Barbara Bush always imagined in the White House, did not rule out a run for the Oval Office in 2016, but wondered how he would fare in today’s Republican Party.
“Although I don’t know, given what I believe and how I believe it, I’m not sure I would have been successful as a candidate either. These are different times than just six years ago, when I last ran, or even longer than that,” he said.
“Have you made a decision that you don’t want to be president?” asked Charlie Rose, the CBS host.
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“I have not made that decision,” Mr Bush responded.
Mr Bush, 59, served as Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, during which he successfully transformed Florida’s public schools from some of the worst in the country to some of the best.
Last year, at a critical moment in the search for a Republican nominee, Mr Bush was anointed “the can-do conservative reformer” on the cover of the National Review, one of America’s most influential right-wing magazines.
However he ignored repeated calls to join the Republican nominations and bid to become yet another President Bush only four years after the last one.
While acknowledging that America might have been ready for another Bush presidency, he said he was sure of one thing: that he would not be selected as Mitt Romney’s running-mate this year.
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“I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to be asked. And it’s not going to happen,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have a voice. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to enthusiastically support Mitt Romney. I intend to do that, I’m doing it. He’s got a great list of candidates that I’m sure he’s thinking about.”
Mr Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, last month officially won the Republican nomination after a victory in the Texas primary earned him the 1,144 delegates required to carry the party’s convention.