Jeb Bush channels his brother: 'A president is a decider'

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published 20 August 2015

Jeb Bush sounded a whole lot like his older brother at a speech Thursday in New Hampshire. So much, in fact, that Jeb seemed to have taken the words right out of George W.'s mouth. "A president is a decider," Jeb said, answering a question about the sort of skill set he thinks the presidency demands. "A president leads by making decisions — many of them are tough."

Now, let's rewind over nine years back to April 2006, when George W. was discussing his decision to keep embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld aboard. "I'm the decider," George W. famously said, "and I decide what's best."

Back when George W. made that infamous remark, it didn't go over so well: "No, he wasn't having a tantrum about the rules of a kickball game. It just sounds that way," CBS News columnist John Kreiser quipped. Others posited that a president can't be "The Decider" on just the good stuff. Most of all, Kreiser wrote, people were upset about "how a man who has such childish syntax can be so successful and powerful."