Jeb Bush discusses politics, policy and a dynasty during interview with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

WAUKESHA – Of course, he's a Bush Republican.

Son of one president and brother of another, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is six years removed from his unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

He's watching from afar as his son George P. Bush faces daunting odds in a Republican Party runoff for Texas Attorney General.

And if you ask Jeb Bush about the possible end of the Bush dynasty, he says without skipping a beat: "Yeah, that's been a topic for many years."

He doesn't focus on the words "Bush Republicans." Instead, he said, there are still voters out there who are "more traditional Republicans of believing in limited government and fixing the things that are going to make it harder for our freedoms to flourish."

Bush was at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Waukesha campus Thursday to meet with students in the afternoon and lecture in the evening.

He was appearing in a program sponsored by the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership. Bush was originally scheduled to be here two years ago, but the pandemic intervened.

"I follow politics," he said during an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "And I certainly follow policy. I'm still curious about how to fix things."

Bush, 69, is founder, president and board chair of the ExcelinEd, previously known as the Foundation for Excellence in Education.  The Florida-based think tank backs educational choice, school accountability and early literacy programs.

He remains focused on the future.

"We should be a little more optimistic and proud of what we have," he said. "But you got to earn it. I'm frustrated that the issues we have, the problems we have are getting worse because we're not solving for them."

While ex-President Donald Trump and some of his supporters keep falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen, Bush indicated it's time to look forward.

"President Trump did far better than what people expected," Bush said. "He could have easily won, but he didn't. And, frankly, President Biden won the election for a whole set of reasons that he immediately ignored."

Bush said the mandate Biden received "was he was going to bring some normalcy. He was going to bring people together. His experience in the Senate, you know, would compel people to come together on the things they agreed on to build on that at least to start the kind of re-weaving the web of civility and consensus building."

Bush added that Biden has "done none of that."

Bush said there was also a big difference between the fallout from the 2020 election than the one in 2000, which came down to a bitterly contested recount in Florida. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes over Al Gore after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the recount.

"Social media didn't exist," he said. "The iPhone didn't exist."

Bush said that over time social media has played a "more deeply divisive kind of political environment."

"Now you can consume information over the internet, you can customize how you get your information, and it validates your views and makes you more righteous about your views, and certainly less tolerant about other people's views," he said. "There's no middle ground. That's the difference. It's a cultural difference driven by technology that we haven't figured out how to deal with."

Bush urged those running for office to be what he termed "forward-leaning," especially when running in a politically-divided state like Wisconsin.

"You have to draw people towards your cause rather than just say how bad the other guys are," he said. "You have to build to get to 50% ...  You still have to go after voters. And you have to give people a little bit of hope that you're going to do some things that will actually help their lives."