Ready for Jeb?

The GOP field in 2016 will not only have quantity but quality. This will not be another case, as the 2012 race was occasionally described, of Mitt Romney and the seven dwarves. The GOP will likely include a number of candidates, Jeb Bush among them, with significant executive experience and records of accomplishment. The ideological spectrum will run the gamut from establishment Republican to mainstream libertarian to conservative firebrand.

And though the advent of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, along with the appearance of super PACs, have made it possible for little-known upstarts to catch fire and have more staying power than they might have otherwise had in the past (see Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich), the race for president still favors those who have name recognition and the ability to raise huge amounts of money.

Among the 2016 field, Jeb Bush stands out as someone with both. And although the name recognition remains a double-edged sword, Democrats flocking to Hillary Clinton’s banner will be hard-pressed to decry the idea of a legacy candidate. Nothing, however, has done more to mitigate the “Bush” name issue than Barack Obama’s troubled second term. As the president continues to stumble through a cascading series of crises, many voters — and not just Republicans — look upon Bush 43 with kinder eyes, and now think fondly (rather than mockingly) of the man who once described himself as “The Decider.”

Democrats have been “ready for Hillary” since the day Obama won re-election. Now, given George P. Bush’s statement on Sunday, Republicans have to start asking themselves whether they’re ready for Jeb.