Jeb Bush on 2012: 'I Am Not Running'

Jeb Bush was asked about his 2012 ambitions yesterday, and he replied in the starkest possible terms. “I am not running for president,” he told a reporter for WHAS11 in Kentucky. The remark seems pretty offhand, but it’s getting national attention, because of recent chatter about a Bush run. Asked why that was, he told the Wall Street Journal, “I haven’t a clue. I have not been running for a while and answer the question the same way every time.”

Bush made the remark en route to give a speech about education at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Bush, who’s widely credited with turning around Florida’s education system, said reform has to be done on a state by state level, but with federal help. “This is one place where I think President Obama deserves some credit,” he added. A day earlier he held a fundraiser for Rand Paul, a critic of Obama’s education policy. (More Jeb Bush stories.)