Jeb Bush Quotes

Quotes by and about Jeb Bush

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Bush: "It's fine to be principled ... but you also have to have an alternative."

Bush: "I am [someone who] dislikes phony formalities."

Bush: "[My weakness in campaigning is that I don't] share enough with people of who I [am]. It [is] all about ideas, and not enough about who is actually going to lead."

Bush: "[As opposed to Ronald Reagan] I have a tendency in politics to migrate to detailed policy [whereas] he lifted people's spirits."

Bush: "I think President Clinton has had a good post-presidency. He's done good things and he's got the great political skills to maybe enhance them even more than the reality of them. But he's stayed involved in a good way."

Bush: "My dad is the greatest man I ever met or ever will ever meet in the broadest sense of the word, in terms of honor, virtue. There is no one like him. It's hard to be the son of someone who's near-perfect."

Politico Magazine: "[As] governor he pushed the boundaries of executive power. ... [He] pulled decision-making authority for his agencies inward to a small circle of staff in the governor's office."

Ana Navarro: "Jeb has a ... serious demeanor. ... He's not the type of guy that reaches out to shoot the breeze or just check in. When he contacts you, it's with a purpose."

Lucy Morgan: "You can't have a discussion with him that is not a policy discussion. He's serious as a heart attack."

Lucy Morgan: "He does not like navel-gazing, as he calls it."

Philip K. Howard: "In all of my dealings with him, he's interested in how you make government deliver effectively. What are the incentives? How do you hold people accountable?"

New York Times: "[He] peppers his speeches with statistics, academic-sounding references to 'quintiles' and self-deprecating jokes about his own geekiness. ... He boasted to a crowd of Republican donors that he was 'nerdy enough' to read City Journal, an obscure policy magazine published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, then recited the names of his favorite writers at the publication."

GQ Magazine: "He is an inexhaustible flurry of energy, traveling constantly, often overseas, and packing more meetings into his schedule each day than most men hold in a month, sometimes six or ten high-stakes sessions before lunch, then working late into the evening with his staff and later still at home, bent over his computer to produce a torrent of e-mails, even while absorbing stacks of reports and data, deep into the night, every night."

Washington Post: "[Jeb] is a wonk almost in a class by himself. ... He reads, thinks about the big issues and ... tries to apply them. ... Paul Ryan is similar in that regard."