COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Former President George W. Bush said he and his father believe Jeb Bush should run for president but ultimately the former Florida governor must make a decision regardless of any pressure from the family.

“I can tell you I can speak for 41,” Bush said, referring to the 41st President George H.W. Bush during the official launch of the 43rd president’s book at his dad’s presidential library center at Texas A&M University. “He ought to run for president. He would make a great president.”

With his father and mother a few feet from him in an auditorium filled with a friendly audience, Bush was responding to questions from Andrew Card, his father’s transportation secretary and his own White House chief of staff, primarily about his personal book “41: A Portrait of My Father.” The older Bush, seated in a wheelchair, smiled and waved but did not speak.

Bush said he didn’t know of any timetable for a decision but said from speaking with his brother, he knows Jeb Bush “doesn’t like the idea of a political class.”

“The idea of ‘Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush’ troubles him, which speaks to his great integrity,” George W. Bush said. “So I said: ‘How does this sound? Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton?”‘

Jeb Bush was not in attendance at the book event Tuesday.

George W. Bush, 68, said he wrote the book now while his father, 90 and in fragile health, was still alive and able to “see how much I care for him,” and how much other people care for him. He also said that a favorable reassessment of George H.W. Bush’s presidency is emerging despite a single term and being “overshadowed” by the two terms of Ronald Reagan.


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