David Frum: Like Obama, Jeb Bush Is Post-American

Oink Oink

The Atlantic:

Both Jeb Bush and Barack Obama are men who have openly and publicly struggled with their ambivalence about their family inheritance. 

Both responded by leaving the place of their youth to create new identities for themselves: Barack Obama, as an organizer in the poor African-American neighborhoods of Chicago; Jeb Bush in Mexico, Venezuela, and at last in Cuban-influenced Miami. 

Both are men who have talked a great deal about the feeling of being “between two worlds”: Obama, in his famous autobiography; Bush, in his speeches. 

Both chose wives who would more deeply connect them to their new chosen identity. 

Both derived from their new identity a sharp critique of their nation as it is. 

Both have built their campaign for president upon a deep commitment to fundamental transformation of their nation into what they believe it should be. ...

Jeb’s dissatisfaction with America, and desire to change it to be more to his liking, is a theme he returns to often. Jeb’s enthusiasm for immigration (“the public-policy issue he cares about by far the most,” as Frum puts it) is “not only a positive judgment on the immigrants themselves,” Frum notes, but “it is also a negative judgment on native-born Americans.” Some examples: 

"They’re more entrepreneurial, they set up more business, they buy more homes, they’re more family-oriented, they work in jobs that in many cases are jobs that have gone unfilled" 

"I think Detroit would do real well if we started repopulating it with young, aspirational people."   

"We have people that mope around thinking 'my life is bad, my children will not have the same opportunities that I had.' What a horrible notion in America, the most optimistic of places, and I think an economically driven immigration plan . . . would lift our spirits up dramatically." 

"The one way that we can rebuild the demographic pyramid is to fix a broken immigration system. . . . 

If we do this, we will rebuild our country in a way that will allow us to grow. If we don’t do it, we will be in decline, because the productivity of this country is dependent on young people that are equipped to be able to work hard. 

Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans over the last 20 years. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families and they have more intact families."