Photograph by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/MCT/Getty Images

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference.

The divide between the impoverished and privileged in the United States is widening, with a society of once great ideals following a disturbing path toward an unsustainable future — a nation in need of “restoration.”

A new regime of educational accountability is the solution to changing the nation’s course — with stringent standards and testing for schoolchildren, appropriate pay for the most talented teachers, a choice of schools for children attending inadequate classes and an embracement of technology.

This was the message that Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, delivered this morning in his keynote address to nearly 1,000 people assembled for a two-day national summit of his Foundation for Excellence in Education in Washington.

There is an unmistakable political message in this as well.

Bush, whose two terms as governor in Florida from 1999 to 2007 were distinguished by his commitment to an “A-Plus” plan for education that rewarded higher-performing public schools, is widely viewed as one of the Republican Party’s top prospects for a presidential campaign in 2016. And, while he has remained mum about any plans for that following the loss of Republican Mitt Romney on Nov. 6, Bush did meet with some of his longtime political and policy advisers in Washington on the eve of this annual conference — including Neil Newhouse, a Washington-area pollster who campaigned for Romney this year and has served Bush in the past.

(Newhouse polled for Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1998 and 2002, and his partner at Public Opinion Strategies, Bill McInturff, polled  for Bush’s first bid in 1994. The gathering of Newhouse and other past advisers here is a regular event for Bush when he’s in town, Bush associates say — calling any reading of the meeting of the “alums”  as a political sign ridiculous. Newhouse called it an informal gathering of about two dozen mostly policy-oriented people over drinks, with no speeches by Bush or anyone else in that open-doored room.)

Still, Bush is embellishing a message on which his older brother, former President George W. Bush, campaigned for president in 2000: The Texas governor proposed a national regime of school accountability, contending that the nation must combat “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He pursued that during his first year, winning passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, a law signed as the nation’s attention was suddenly turned to terrorism by the attacks of September 11, 2001. The law was enacted by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, though it since has become a target of ridicule for “teaching to the test,” with states complaining that the federal government never supplied the financing necessary to help them meet the national standards.

It’s a durable message for a post-Iraq, and ultimately post-Afghanistan campaign — with the 2016 presidential campaign offering potential anew for a contest centered on domestic issues. Bush, who today called himself “a Texan by birth and a Floridian by choice,” has been pursuing education reform since 1994, when he lost his first election as governor and started a charter school in Miami with the leader of the Urban League there.

“He was a principled governor, principled politician,” said Phil Handy, an Orlando business consultant who chaired Bush’s campaigns. Handy credits Bush with a series of accolades that sound bumper-sticker-ready: “Persistence, courage, principle, strategic thinking.” He likes to say “the job is never done,” Handy told the ballroom crowd at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington today. This room with representatives from 45 states, he said,“attests to the fact that the job isn’t done.”

That job, as Bush tells it, is getting a nation back on track. And it starts in the classroom.

It is, he said, “a cause greater than ourselves” — the “restoration” of America, founded on education.

“Past is prologue… and history has a way of repeating itself, so learning from history is important,” said Bush, citing a recently read book by the sociologist Charles Murray about “this great challenge that faces our nation.” The U.S., Bush said, has moved from a nation of shared ideals to “a country that is changing not for the better.”

“We have these huge gaps in income,” he said, with “people born into poverty who will stay in poverty.”

“This ideal of who we are as a nation… it’s going away, it’s leaving us,” he said, maintaining that “there is one path that can change this course… a child-centered education.”

“Where is the outrage, where is the shame of this?” Bush asked in his keynote address to the fifth annual series of foundation conferences that have roamed from Washington in election years to other venues such as San Francisco. “This is not the America that we love… We ought to shake the complacency off of us… to challenge the complacency of the time.”

“I would suggest to you that high standards — I’m not kidding standards — is the first step,” he said, calling for a system of common measurements nationally and teacher evaluations based on their professional skills, not their union membership or tenure. Those standards, the offering of choices such as charter schools and tuition vouchers and technology that allows students to advance at their own pace are the key, he said. “If we stay true to these five ideals… we can reverse this trend and shake the complacency.”

“All children are not above average… I know that will be a shock to a lot of people,” he said, yet testing will reveal who needs the most improvement. “We’ll have a challenge — will we have the courage to stay the course, to faithfully implement higher standards… and recognize the fact that too many of our children are lagging behind…. We have to start with higher expectations for the next generation.

“If we’ve learned one lesson from reform, it is this: we continually underestimate children…. It will take some adjustment but our kids will rise to the challenge,” Bush said. “We reward the things we want more of… We are not as happy when there is mediocrity… and when there is failure, we should have no tolerance for it.”

The words are familiar.

We’ve heard them from this Bush since 1994, in Florida and at his national conferences. We heard them from his brother from Texas in 2000. And we heard them again today in Washington, a few blocks from the White House.

Original post is Jeb Bush’s American `Restoration’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on the final day of the Republican National Convention (RNC).

Updated at 1:15 pm EST

Jeb Bush is in town.

The former Florida governor, brother of one former president and son of another, is encamped in Washington — in a hotel just a few blocks from the White House, as the National Review Online notes  – ostensibly for another national conference of his Foundation for Excellence in Education. It’s the fifth annual conference, the last one in San Francisco. Bush sets the election year parleys in Washington.

While here, NRO’s Robert Costa reports, Bush held a private, one-hour meeting Monday with some political operatives — including Neil Newhouse, a Washington-area pollster who served as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign pollster and has a long association with Bush.

Neilhouse, of Alexandria, Va.-based Public Opinion Strategies, polled for both of Bush’s winning campaigns in 1998 and 2002. He tells Political Capital that the get-together yesterday was nothing but an informal gathering of a couple of mostly policy-oriented associates of Bush over drinks — the door to their meeting open, with no speechifying.

Bush, Costa reports, was not ruling out a presidential run of his own in 2016: “I am here to catch up with folks and promote education reform,” he said in an interview — with a reported smile. He called the crew with whom he met in the J.W. Marriott hotel’s Cannon room “an alumni group that I like keeping in touch with.” He maintained that he is “here to focus on educational reform.”

Bush, who served two terms as governor and has long been involved in education reform,  opened his two-day education summit of workshops and speeches at the Marriott this morning as the “keynote” breakfast speaker. They counted 950 people from 45 states.

They’ll be talking about many of the same issues that Bush has explored since starting another foundation following his first, losing, campaign for governor in 1994, when he opened a charter school in Miami with the leader of the Urban League there, T. Willard Fair: School choice. Tuition vouchers are on the agenda today.

True to form, Bush has an ecumenical guest list: With Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama’s education secretary, and John Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, on the speakers’ list. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who had been seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate this year, will deliver the keynote breakfast address tomorrow.

And the keynoters tonight at dinner include: Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state in the administration of Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, will join Joel Klein, a former education chancellor for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Original post is Jeb Bush: `Here’ for Education by Political Capital.

Photograph by Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg

Mitch Daniels

It looks like Mitch Daniels has a new job.

The Indianapolis Star is reporting that the Indiana governor is going to be the next president of Purdue University, though the trustees don’t vote on his nomination until Thursday.

From a top staffer for Sen. Richard Lugar, a stint as Ronald Reagan’s political director, then off to be a top executive at Eli Lilly & Co, and then to governor, Daniels has a coveted mix of public and private sector experience that is valued in his party. And the two-term governor gave Mitt Romney his endorsement in April.

Daniels has often been named as a possible running mate for Romney, with folks like Speaker John Boehner touting his qualifications.

But Daniels has been unequivocal in his lack of interest in the job, telling Fox as recently as last month that it wasn’t an office he wanted or planned to hold. He was also considered a possible contender for the Republican nomination this cycle, but he never threw his hat in the ring, saying his family was opposed to a run.

An unexpected swing state in 2008, President Obama took Indiana by just a point, although it appears the state may have swung back into the red column for this cycle.

Original post is Gov. Mitch Daniels to Head to Purdue by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Sen. Richard Lugar outside the Senate chamber in Washington.

Indiana Senator Richard Lugar is getting extra help from some powerful people as a May 8 Republican primary nears.

YG Network Inc., a non-profit independent expenditure group led by former aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, two days ago spent $104,628 on a mailing designed to help the sixth-term senator who is facing his toughest re-election ever. Lugar, who faces off against Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, is battling against attack ads funded by super-PACs and outside groups like Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. Both groups say Lugar is too supportive of expanding the scope of government.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for YG Network and Cantor’s former communications director, said the Indiana primary is “a natural first playing field” for an effort by the nonprofit group to educate voters about lawmakers like Lugar it believes will help boost U.S. energy production without endangering the environment.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a Republican who backs Lugar, has also elevated his profile in the race, appearing in an April 23 ad to make light of the outside groups who seek to define Lugar.

“It’s funny in a way, folks from elsewhere here telling us who’s a real Hoosier,” he said in the ad shot from Lugar’s Indiana farm and aired in Indianapolis. “I can’t think of anyone so reflective of the thinking, principles and ideals of our state.”

He could use the help. Majority PAC, a super-PAC run by two former top aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, spent $17,500 on online advertisements attacking Lugar, Federal Election Commission filings show. Majority PAC is working to defend the Democrats’ 53-47 Senate majority, and surveys show that the Democratic nominee, Representative Joe Donnelly, may be more competitive against Mourdock than against Lugar.

Greg Giroux contributed to this post.

Original post is Outside Groups Influencing Indiana Senate Primary by Political Capital.