WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is everything that the Bush family doesn’t like: doctrinaire, boastful, sanctimonious and mean. But as a group, the Bushes may be able to tolerate his sunnier Cuban-American rival, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, if their literal favorite son, Jeb Bush, fails in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
That’s the assessment of a knowledgeable student of Bushworld, Pulitzer Prize- winning author Jon Meacham. His new biography of President George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, is just out.
“Let’s be clear,” Meacham said in an interview with The Huffington Post. The identity of the Republican 2016 nominee? “They will not be happy unless his name is Jeb.”
“I don’t think Ted Cruz is someone they would like to see win the nomination,” Meacham said.
“I think that if anyone besides Jeb, I think Rubio would fit in with the Bush code. They really are about looking forward.”
And Rubio, in terms of age and demography, would fit that description in a more upbeat way than Cruz and his “confrontational politics,” Meacham said.
Watch the HuffPost Live interview with Meacham above.
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