 Born and raised in Texas, Jeb Bush moved to Florida in 1980. The son and brother of presidents, he himself was governor of the Sunshine State from 1999 to 2007, where he quickly became known as a champion of school choice and fiscal responsibility. In 2016, he had an unsuccessful run for president, and he now resides in Miami-Dade County, happily retired from political life. A self-proclaimed old school conservative with libertarian blood running through his veins. He first talked to Bush in October for a special issue of reason devoted to all things Florida. He told me the reasons he believes more people are moving to Florida than any other state. What he thinks of current Governor Ron DeSantis and leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. His problems, and they are many, with President Joe Biden and what's so special about immigration and America. Governor Jeb Bush, thanks for talking to reason. Honored to be with you, Nick. So let's start with the question of, you know, Florida has become the fastest growing state in the country. What explains Florida's growth as a destination for people wanting to move there and live there and work there? I think Florida works pretty good. It's like whatever problems we have, paled by comparison to other states. I mean, like if you know disrespect to the Northeast, but if you have business up there like I do, and you go and you drive, like you're going to get a broken back, basically trying to go from here to there, because the infrastructure is decayed, the challenges are immense. And you come here and the roads, the roads are working. They've got a lot of people on them, but fewer potholes, things work better. And so it's for people that come to visit, they can kind of get the allure of Florida. And then typically what happens is they visit a few times and then they say, all right, I'm making them, I'm making the jump. When did you move there? What year? 1980. 1980. And Florida has at least since the, I mean in the post-war era, but definitely in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and continuing just saw really kind of explosive growth. Texas has also where you grew up. You went to school at University of Texas Austin. I hope that they lose in whatever football games that they have coming up this season. I'm rooting for Ohio State, be that as it may, both Texas and Florida, two states that have become reliably red are now kind of kicking the butt of New York and California. These four states are the four most popular states in the country. Is there something going on where the general kind of political system in Florida and Texas is being revealed as better than the ones that are in place in California and New York? In Miami-Dade County, Rod Liff has two and a half million people. It's a big urban teaming place full of diversity. It has a 1.4% unemployment rate. I mean, effectively, it used to be, Nick, we're old enough to remember full employment was like at 4%. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, people are half the people have two jobs, I guess. I don't know. It's like it's full of opportunities. The tax code matters obviously for people with more wealth for sure. We don't have income tax. We have smaller governments. The impulse isn't to try to tax your way to prosperity or regulate your way to prosperity. It's not a perfect place for sure. I get nervous about bragging too much because the minute you stop challenging basic assumptions about the role of government is your atrophy sets in. And government kind of just starts filling the seams. And so we've had a great run because we've had a period of limited government and we don't try to micromanage people's lives. And as long as we do that and we stay focused on the important long term things and I would say making sure infrastructure stays up with the growth, making sure our natural systems are protected, which is an important conservative principle in my mind is, you know, you could rape and pillage the swamp lands around South Florida and you would have a hell of a problem going forward. So investing in these long term things, which they don't do in California and New York because they've made, you know, 20, 30 years ago, they made obligations to the unions and obligations in the here and now that creates a government that is far bigger than it is in Texas or in Florida. Tuck a bit more about conservation efforts or the environment in Florida is a big deal because, you know, it's a state that is surrounded by water on, you know, three sides, right? And environmental regulations tend to be looked to scans by conservatives. They're also expensive. How, when you were governor, how did you manage to keep environmental regulations in place that preserve, you know, the ecosystem, you know, the kind of natural infrastructure but also didn't overwhelm the ability to kind of create jobs and build, you know, space for more people to move there? So we had a land purchasing program that identified the pristine areas, the watersheds that were important to protect that otherwise could eventually become developed. And we either did conservation easements or we purchased them. We purchased or did conservation easements. We did $3 billion, probably $4 billion during eight years. Directly appropriations for the legislature and a Florida forever program where we took dock stamp revenues. Basically, the growth of the state was taxed through transfer taxes, you know, when you sell or buy a piece of property. And that money was bonded to buy these properties and it was called Florida forever. And that's a tradition that is bipartisan, but Republicans have been just as aggressive in protecting these long-term things. Because Florida would be a crappy place to live if we develop along the watersheds. And secondly, it would make it really hard to, we don't have dams. I mean, we had the tallest place in Florida's 10 miles south of Alabama. We have 55 inches of rainfall and it all goes out to tide, basically. So protecting these systems is also good to be able to continue to grow, to have water capacity for urban development, for agriculture and for the natural systems. So, you know, conservation, low taxes, low business regulation allows the economy to grow and for people to be able to move there. What about the cultural side? And that may not be the right word, but when you look at the history of Florida, you know, through the 60s, it was part of the Confederacy. It was a segregated state. You know, somehow in the 70s and beyond, it really moved into a modern phase. How, you know, you don't get the sense that Floridians in the 1950s were kind of the hustling entrepreneurs that you see there now. How did the culture change and how important is that to the vitality of a place to live? That's a great question. My gubernatorial hero was Governor Collins. He wasn't a Republican. I don't think there were any Republicans back then in the 1950s. His first, before he got elected, before he got inaugurated, he took a trade mission to Latin America. I mean, like, who does that? Not in the 1950s. And he fought against segregation. Successive governors worked hard on economic development. And the population itself changed. We became, you were totally right. I mean, people down here in Miami, when I came, they were calling it Miami, like a southern town. So the combination of influx of immigrants and influx of other people, of people from other parts of the country, and pretty progressive leadership that says we're not going to be successful unless we, you know, you can be respectful of the past, of the southern heritage for sure. But I think the aspiration, and I certainly felt this way when I was governor, we're not a region. We're a region in ourselves. We're a mega state, and we need to behave like that. And so one of the challenges we face is I always got really pissed off when people said, you know, I said, where are you from? I did it as a matter of habit. And they would say, I'm from Pennsylvania. I said, no, no, you're not. You're from Florida. Like, come on, be proud of the place. And I think that's kind of caught on now. I think people are actually very proud to live here. What's the role of education? The South as a region kind of historically lagged in education for a variety of reasons. Florida, particularly under your guidance, really started setting a path for the state funding, not just education in general, but more choice and things like that. When we're talking roads, we're talking the environment, we're talking tax regulation. What about education? So this is what is not discussed in detail. But call it, say, Chicago or Washington, DC or New York, they spend $25,000 per student. You divide it all up more or less than New York. The average per pupil spending is about $30,000 a year, an average of my state. I was trying to be kind. How much of that is basically to pay for the sins of the past? Pension obligations that were negotiated, health care benefits for retirees. How much of that is actually going to the classroom? Compare that to Florida where people in the past didn't do that. In fact, when I was governor, we eliminated tenure. We moved to an option for a defined contribution plan rather than defined benefit. The pension was effectively well-funded compared to other states. So you can focus on the here and now in education. So our funding, while it's less than the national average, in terms of classroom education, I think is pretty good. And then we didn't just accept the status quo. We graded schools. And if schools were failing, parents would give options. We eliminated social promotion. We created real robust accountability. We put a real focus on early childhood literacy. And we created the most expansive public and private parental choice programs in the country. And that result is parents, like here in Miami-Dade, third or fourth largest school district in the country, 70% of the students' parents decide where their kids go to school. Think of that. I mean, would Los Angeles be better? Would Chicago be better? Would New York be better under that system? Hell, yeah, it would. And so we've seen, particularly in the lower income communities, kids of color or kids with learning disabilities, we're top five in the country based on the nation's report card. There's still a long way to go. And then I would add, Nick, I'm not talking about the US News and World Report kind of input driven rankings of colleges, but the more qualitative rankings, University of Florida is like top two or three public university in the country, in terms of entrance rates, in terms of research, in terms of graduation rates, in terms of, and it's free. It's, I mean, don't get Bernie Sanders upset about this, but we actually have bright future scholarships. So anybody that qualifies for that does not pay tuition. And if you do pay tuition, it's about the lowest tuition in the country, maybe second lowest in the country. So that's a pretty good deal. It's about the best deal a family will ever get from government, irrespective of what state they're eventually going to live in, to be able to get a high quality education. So yeah, all the way through college. Yeah, pre-K, we have universal pre-K. What is your sense of, excuse me, legislation under the current governor, Ron DeSantis, things like the Stop Woke Act, which affect higher education as well as K through 12. And it does not seem to be particularly good for academic freedom as well as freedom of expression. Does that concern you? It concerns me a little bit. I do think that if you're in fourth grade or below, that you shouldn't be accessing any discussion of sexual orientation. Unless your parents choose to put you in a school where that's part of the curriculum? Of course. Or if your parent decides that after school, they can talk all they want about that stuff. I'm not sure there'd be like 1% of parents that would talk to a kindergartener about this stuff. I'm taking more of the higher education because you're right that both University of Florida, Florida State, certainly University of Central Florida, which is now, I think, the largest institution in the country, that's where you're hearing people, including faculty, saying like, I can't teach history under this kind of law. I don't know. I mean, look, the governor has a master at virtue signaling, but so is the left. I mean, we're in this virtue signaling food fight. I'm not sure the substance of the bills that have passed have created a dangerous place for speech. I'm not certain that that's the case. But I do think we have to be vigilant about it. It's one thing to say, you can't impose these woke cultural values on everybody, which I think is an issue. It's the other thing to say, well, therefore, we're going to impose our values on everybody. I'm kind of an old school conservative with libertarian blood running through my veins. And I think what we need to find is an environment where we let people have an honest discourse. And if you believe what I believe, you should have the right to discuss it and defend it. And you should allow other people, the people that may disagree with aren't the enemy, they just might be wrong. And have an open dialogue. And I think our universities are pretty good at that compared to other places where we're seeing right now. If you're a Jewish kid going to one of these elite schools, you're in danger. I mean, that is ridiculous what's going on. So both sides have these impulses that I think I'm uncomfortable with. But I would say the left is probably much worse than the right. We talked about Florida being like the destination for places. It has the fifth highest foreign-born population as a percentage of its residents in the country. In 2022, more Americans move from other states to Florida than any other state in terms of net migration. My question is, do immigrants, whether they're from outside the country or within the country, do they bring their values with them? This is what you hear a lot. Venezuelans coming into Florida are going to turn it into Venezuela of the north. New Yorkers, Californians going to Florida are going to bring those governmental systems with them. Do you believe that? Or do you think that's off? I think it's off. It's always been a concern that all these whoever, from wherever they come and they bring their values. But I mean, think about it. If someone's leaving California, and there's quite a few Californians that have moved here from war to Texas and to Arizona. But if they're leaving, they're leaving for a reason. They're probably leaving because they want economic opportunity for themselves and their families. Or they're tired of being taxed to death. So one of the interesting data points in terms of migration is I think 25% of all of the income that has moved from one state to the other has moved to Florida, 25%. So these are high income people that are moving here because if you live in New York City, the next budget shortfall, which is probably next month, the first idea, the second idea, the third idea is tax the rich. Well, there's probably 1% of the taxpayers probably pay 40% of the budget. These guys are really stupid to do this, but they keep doing it. And so you've got people migrate for different reasons. The immigrants from other countries, there is no evidence that Hugo Chavez is going to do well in Miami. I promise you that. I mean, obviously the Cubans who moved from Cuba, they love Castro. That's really what they were coming to America for, right? What do you mean? So the point I wanted to make because in Miami-Dade County, which I keep talking about because I live here, 65%, maybe 70% of the people in this county were born outside the country. There is nothing like it in the rest of the country. Los Angeles may come close. And these are patriotic people. There is no woke. I mean, people don't walk around with pronouns. And they're calling cards around here. They believe in freedom. They've left oppressive regimes. They're concerned when they see policies that try to impose a heavy hand of government. It's chaotic. It's diverse. It's fun. And it adds a dynamism that is really remarkable. The principal reason why I moved in 1980, and it's even better now. What do you make, though, of the anti-immigrant sentiments that are definitely on the rise throughout the country? But people like Ron DeSantis. People like Donald Trump, who I'm talking to you from New York. I think Florida has to claim Donald Trump as a Floridian now. And we'll talk about the Florida man concept in a bit. But what do you make of the anti-immigrant sentiment, which seems to be rising throughout the country, but also in places like Florida where people are streaming in? Where does it come from? And how do you manage it? Well, first, I think there's a legitimate concern about an open border. And whether you are a pro-immigration like I am or a nativist and want to close legal immigration even, great countries, all countries, should have the right to control their border. And this current administration, the previous administration had great rhetoric, didn't do much, did a little bit better. But this administration has been the convergence of bad policy and bad politics. You want to stay away from that intersection. And he manages to sit right in the center of it with his border policy. So there's a lot of anger and frustration for that. I'm not sure that's a xenophobic feeling at all. I think it's a legitimate concern about this wave of people taking advantage of a broken immigration system. These people come, and they claim, they say they have a well-founded fear of persecution. And ultimately, 5% will have a legitimate claim. And they should be allowed in. 95% don't after four years because the courts are all clogged up. And then they get their deportation order. And the likelihood of them showing up for that is slim or not. How would you address that then? And there is that separate issue of legal immigration, which people like Donald Trump has said, when he was president, he wanted to reduce legal immigration. He did. He actually did, yeah. But how do you deal with the border? And then how do you kind of disconnect the two so that people aren't thinking immigration is, by definition, a criminal act almost? You changed the asylum laws to require people to make their claims outside the country. The Trump administration for a while did that. But they may not have had the legal basis to do it by executive order. You need to change the law. That would be one element. Controlling the border using technology and a wall where it's not appropriate across every mile, but it certainly would provide some security there. Use the verify properly. Create a guest worker program where it's easy to come to work legally than it is to come illegally. Create a narrow than people that are coming by family reunification, where the only country in the world that has spouse and minor children like all other countries, but also adult siblings and adult parents. So we've had, since 1965, majority of people coming or coming through that family reunification, a lot of them are not as productive as they could be if you narrowed that and expanded the number of people coming that aren't taking jobs away, but are creating jobs. Use the Canada model. Deal with the dreamers that, through no fault of their owner here, and give them a path. And when you say deal with them, yeah, you mean offer them a way to be here legally. Yeah. I mean, come on. These are like 25-year-old young men and women now. They had no nexus to the country that their parents brought them in. I mean, let's be realistic about it. And then for the 10 to 12 million people that are probably 12, 13 now, million people here illegally, give them a path to residency, not citizenship, which I think would be the fair thing to do. Now, I wrote a book about this. And those were the ideas. And those ideas, I wrote that in 2013. And it still applies because the political class up in DC want to use this both sides, want to use this as a political wedge issue. Yeah. You and your brother were, in many ways, you're kind of like a dying breed of pro-immigration and pro-immigrant Republicans. What has happened to the Republican Party that it has veered so far away from seemingly having anything good to say about immigrants? I don't know. I mean, I think there are a lot of Republicans that are pro-immigrant per se. But look, the reason why people are angry is the systems that we've relied on, the institutions we've relied on, haven't worked. We can't enforce our existing laws as it relates to immigration. People get upset. I think it's legitimate. You have the avalanche of fentanyl coming into our country and the tragedy that that brings. You have, I mean, think of what institution is working the way it should in the 21st century. And so there is a deep resentment that the elites are doing quite well. Like, I'm blessed. I've got a healthy family, an intact family. I'm in business in a way that I can add value. I've got a great life, and a lot of other people do. But there are a ton of people that are one paycheck away from real hardship. And the system hasn't been working for a lot of those folks. And so you try to find scapegoats. And whether you like President Trump or not, I'm not a big fan, he has tapped into that anger better than any politician in the last generation of time. And it explains, I think, and that connection explains his pretty stronghold on the Republican Party right now. Does that hold were you going into 2024? And to keep it kind of in Florida, you have Trump holed up in Mar-a-Lago. You have DeSantis, who in many ways has, he courted Trump. He's very Trump-like in many of his policies, even if he's not doing very well. Is there a future for a Republican Party that is really centered around a kind of Trump personality and agenda, which seems to be, we got to close the borders. We got to exert more control over everyday life, things like that. I think the way you deal with the legitimate resentment that people feel and the anger and the angst that they feel is to fix the things that are broken. And if that happens, I think people, a candidate or a message that is more hopeful and optimistic about the future rather than one that's about grievance and anger could prevail. But right now, that's not the case. So it's hard to see how in 2024 there'll be any kind of sea change on that. But Nick, I mean, think about it. If you compare the United States to other countries, we're the only developed country that could rebuild our demographic pyramid that could be young and dynamic again. We lead the world in all sorts of innovations and technologies. We have a pretty good neighborhood. If we control the border, Mexico is not going to invade us. The Canadians, you know. You got to keep your eye on that one, but generally, yeah. Yeah, we got a huge border with them. Maybe they'll, but they're one-tenth our size. And they've got the Atlantic in Pacific. I mean, Europe is confronted with all sorts of historical and current challenges that make us look really peaceful. China's demography is a disaster. Their economy is a disaster. The debt loads they have are very similar to ours. But we could renew ourselves. But it requires fixing some really important things. And I would hope that the conservative side of politics would be the ones that offer those up because the other guys are going to offer, you know, more whatever, green new deals and infrastructure business where you mandate. If you're, you know, you have to have a left-handed Albanian in your cabinet or your board of directors or all this weird stuff that the progressive love to impose on people, it's not going to look good. If we get back in the game, I'm, you know, I'm excited for my grandchildren. Right now, I worry about it. What do you think the Republican Party, you know, a decade ago or 20 years ago, it did seem to be leaning, when it looked to the future, it seemed to be leaning libertarian. I'm saying, you know, government should be doing a few essential things and doing them well. That got derailed, you know, by wars. It got derailed by administrative bloat and a lot of other things. But now when you look at the Republican Party, it's rare to see anybody have, nobody has a libertarian bone in the body. They're not talking about spending. They're not talking about reducing the size and scope of government. Is a, you know, does the Republican Party need to go libertarian in order to kind of win the future? Look, I'm out of politics. I guess I'm so old school that I think believing in freedom and limited government and entrepreneurial capitalism, rather than picking winners and losers and doing it through government is the path forward. I've always believed that I haven't changed my mind. I don't know, but maybe the indicator is the subscription base of reason. Is it up or down? Yeah, well, we're reaching more people, you know, so maybe that's good, but. Well, keep it up because you gotta keep working it because it doesn't look like it's having much effect in DC right now. You're absolutely right. Conservatives, you know, when Jim Jordan trying to buy votes, literally to buy votes to become the speaker says, well, I'll guarantee you, we'll get rid of the salt. You know, bring back the salt deduction for high income people in high, you know, high in big government states. That's the state and local income, or the state and local tax deduction, which was the one great thing. Yeah, so it was a cap on it with the. Yeah, that was great. That was the best thing I've ever seen. Exactly. And you know, it was, why should people in Florida pay for the burdensome nature of the government in New Jersey or New York? And so he was willing to buy that, buy a handful of votes, I guess, apparently I've read that in the midst of his negotiations. Well, a conservative would never do that. Like, so these are, this is a different version. These are populists maybe, not conservatives. They're certainly not libertarian. I mean, the only thing that I would say in the defense of the Republican Party, it's not as bad as the Democratic Party. What is so bad? But it's certainly not like. What is so bad? It's up in a cold sled saying the deficit's too high. Yeah, what is so bad about the Democratic Party under Joe Biden at this point? Proposing what, a $6 trillion spending plan for money and with money we didn't, don't have and only getting two trillion or something, you know? These are big numbers. Is using the regulatory state to carry out his agenda. I have a business that we're involved in that helps, that refurbishes transformers. Well, there's now a new law, a new rule that's going through the process that would basically eliminate the supply chain of transformers, which is kind of important if you wanna electrify the transportation system and harden the grid and expand. When you think of all the GPUs that are necessary for data processing and this all requires transformers and it's a policy that deals with using materials that we can't, we don't make to be part of the transformer manufacturing process that will have less carbon emissions. So it's this multitude of agendas that are imposed that make it harder and harder for the United States to compete. That troubles me. Did you ever think, I mean, as you were rising through the ranks and whatnot that after the 2000 that you would be seeing the rise of anti-free trade people on the Democratic side and the Republican side and people being anti-immigrant again. In 2000, I didn't see it though. I didn't see it when I was governor either. Now, this has happened maybe in increments not discernible to the naked eye. It's kind of happened over time, like all things do. I mean, that's, we're living, we're not in a linear world. We're in a cyclical world and the cycle right now is people are very comfortable with advocating government solutions to everything. Now, another reason why I love Florida is the contagion hasn't spread to other places. I mean, we're AAA-bond rated and we don't have an income tax. We under governor Scott, I think they reduced the state debt by 70%. I mean, there was no debt issued in the eight years that Rick Scott was governor. What other state did that in a high growth situation? I certainly didn't, Charlie Chris didn't do it. I don't know if governor DeSantis has, but there is a way to show that you can, you know, pursue limited government ideas and balance the budget, create reserves, deal with eight, you know, hurricanes all the time, don't have a bloated government and help people and put the people that are most vulnerable in the front of the line. That philosophy still exists here. You, one of the ways, or one of the things that's kind of unique about Florida is the special tax districts, which have become, you know, kind of a big thing, you know, between fights between Disney and DeSantis and whatnot. Could you explain quickly what those are and are you in favor of maintaining them? Because how many are there in Florida? I mean, there are hundreds. There's a ton of them. Some of them are very limited in their scope, water districts and others. They're regional in some cases. They, some of them have taxing powers and, you know, the proper thing to do is hold them to account, sunset them, review them. In the case of the Reedy Creek, it is pretty unique. In fact, it's the only one of its kind, which is, in effect, the quasi-county government. And it was pretty smart to do in whatever, 1960, because there were two counties where the Disney's property existed and this was a way to assure that the quality that Disney had in terms of governance, infrastructure could be maintained. And frankly, the infrastructure inside Reedy Creek is world-class. I mean, it's not, I'm not kidding, like best infrastructure in the United States. So there was a reason for doing it. I remember when I was governor, we had 68 chalices, silver chalices that were part of the SS Florida, you know, group of silverware for hosting people, I guess. And the 68th was Reedy Creek. It was kind of part of who we were. I don't know, I'm uncomfortable with changing that. I think it's important to have accountability around it. And the governor's task, or the board that he's replaced the Disney executives, I guess, are supposed to be doing that. As long as it's not punitive, I mean. But it was, right? I mean, he explicitly said he was going after Disney because they crossed him on a couple of laws or initiative. It, yes, it was punitive in terms of rhetoric for sure. Is it punitive in terms of the operations of Disney and Central Florida? I don't know. I'm not sure, but I hope it isn't because 80,000 employees and billions of dollars of investment, it's a principal reason why we don't have an income tax in our state. I mean, 32 million people last time I checked go to the Disney properties. It's an economic driver of success for a ton of other people, not just the employees of Disney. So I think you need to be respectful of that. And if the young ends out in Southern California or woke, okay, fine. I mean, the Disney CEO should have, should have like slapped him across the face and said, you know, grow up. The fact that he didn't created this kind of vulnerability for Disney. And I think that this passage of the law was more than appropriate, but you go beyond the rhetorical slapping Disney in the face where you're actually hurting the enterprise. You're hurting Florida. And I don't know. I don't think, I think the rule on that, it's not clear whether that's happened or not. Would you talk a little bit about Excel in Ed, which you're the head of. Why, you know, this is a group that really pushes, you know, kind of personalized backpack funding, a variety of school reforms that really give parents and students more control over how they get educated or how they educate themselves. What motivated you to focus on education and education choice? I think, I mean, I've been interested in educational choice and education since gosh, we founded Pluridians for Educational Choice in 1990. Tom Feeney, who became the Speaker of the House in Florida and myself and Billy Nese was a person in Fort Myers. We created this and the first event we did was a barbecue with Polly Williams, who was the sponsor of the legislation in Wisconsin. I go that far back. Yeah, yeah. And I just think. Local councilwoman who had been a member of the Black Panther Party and whatnot, a real, you know, mover and shaker in school choice. She sponsored the bill and Tommy Thompson supported it and passed it into law and kind of yearn for those days where, at least on the one thing that a conservative and a liberal would agree on, they would pause and actually act on it and that's what they did. So I just think, you know, in a world where you want more parental engagement and you want them to be informed consumers of the most important service that their family will ever have, which is a quality education, they're going to be a better arbiter of what's right for their kids and a better judge of what the best school is. And Florida was, you know, basically, parents were locked out. And so apart from advocating, I got a chance to act on that. And successive governors and legislatures have followed up after that. So one of the lessons in policy world is success is never final, reform's never complete. Governor DeSantis gets great credit with the legislature passing a full-blown, I'm not kidding, education savings account and hundreds of thousands of students today, but literally at, you know, then years from now it could be over a million students will be going to the school that their parents choose. Miami-Dade right now got 60% of students are going to a school, public or private that their parents choose. And Miami-Dade's school system is considered the best urban school district in the country. There's not a surprise for me that if you empower parents, you're going to get a diversity of offerings. And if you have accountability around that and parents understand where their kids stand, you're going to get a great result. And, you know, for the elite families, everything's going to be fine. You know, because they're the first teachers of their kids, they tutor their kids, they pay for, you know, they pay for tutors, they do all this stuff to protect their kids and help them learn. But what about the 90% of families that don't have that luxury? You better make sure your schools are vibrant, are focused on the future, make sure kids can read by third grade, access to algebra in the middle schools, have career orientation where appropriate in high school and have just high expectations because kids are smarter than we give them credit for. So Excel and Ed takes these ideas, takes them on the road. We were, the Florida literacy efforts were emulated in Mississippi, and Mississippi's had the greatest gains in early education based on the nation's report card. It was 50th out of 50, and it went, it's now, it's the only state in the pandemic era that is actually seeing significant gains. Why? Because they had high expectations for kids, mostly minority kids, mostly low income kids. They trained teachers on the science of reading, not the bogus other approach the majority of teachers were taught. And they ended social promotion in third grade. And it can work. I mean, and now the so-called Mississippi miracle, it's really not a miracle, it's hard work by teachers that are trained appropriately where resources are given to let them soar. Do you think there's a contradiction among conservative education reformers where on the one hand there's an emphasis on choice, which at various points people, liberals or people on the left talked about it, but that's kind of faded. They're very locked into a kind of centralized status quo, old model. But conservatives who say on the one hand they wanna give parents more and more choice, but then people like Ron DeSantis who say, okay, but certain books, certain curricula, certain things are off the table. Is that a contradiction that needs to be kind of explored and blown up? Yeah, but show me the books that were banned, so-called ban, the books in question were removed from elementary school to age-appropriate places. Is that appropriate? Yeah, I think it is. Look, there's so much misinformation these days. And people, they aggregate their news in ways that validates their beliefs. They're not learning anything, they're just getting their views validated. I think I heard you talk about that on Megan Kelly or someplace. Travels away. It's, you know, something that confirms your beliefs, right, a programmer show that confirms what you already know. Yeah, there is definitely confirmation bias in all the information we get. And I know the people, Manny Diaz is a commissioner of education. I've talked to him about this and the amount of heat that has been generated. I mean, look, Governor DeSantis, he's been a really effective governor and I think he's done a fine job, but he's controversial as all get out by design. You know, candidate Ron wants to get, wants to, wants the Libs all fired up because that is kind of the way we play politics now. Governor Ron, if you look at actually what the, you know, what's happened and the implementation of it, it's a little bit different. And, you know, I like, I like leadership at the governor's place because things can, you can move the needle there, you know, and that's what he's done. And Florida is a better place because he's been an aggressive governor. What do you think about his, you know, shipping or sending migrants to, you know, places like New York City or Martha's Vineyard and stuff like that? Well, that's a virtue signaling, very creative one. It seems to have gotten the attention of people and now you have big city mayors that are saying the Biden administration has got to get its act together and forcing the border. Had that not had had Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis and maybe other governors not done this, they probably wouldn't have gotten that attention. Do I, am I comfortable with, you know, people looking who know, you know, I'm not concerned about people crossing the border like they're bad people at all. If I was in their circumstance, I would do the exact same thing. That doesn't make it right. We have broken immigration law that's not enforced and these families, I have sympathy for them for sure. But the Biden administration should get its act together and they ought to work with Congress to fix the laws that are broken and they ought to enforce the existing laws in a much better way. And they're negligent on this and a lot of people are suffering. You think about the people that don't make it to the border because they believe that they can get in. Think of the loss of life. Think of the amount of money that the coyotes have gotten, the drug dealers have gotten. You know, this is a disaster. It's a humanitarian disaster and the focus ought to be on the Biden administration their inability to follow the law. As a final question, the concept of the Florida man, you know, a person that's usually a man, it can be a woman, you know, doing incredibly insane stupid things often while, you know, after snorting whatever was around and things like that has become ubiquitous over the past decade. What do you make of the Florida man meme? Look, it's probably not fair, but who cares? It's funny. We should embrace it, you know, like we're striving to have a disproportionate number of candidates for the Darwin award each year and we should be very proud of it. Yeah, you want to run the table. I'll tell you what, I'll take the Florida man, all the people laughing at Florida because of that. I'll take our tax structure. I'll take our environmental policy. I'll take our education system. I'll take our way of life and I'll be okay. Just a quick follow-up on that, you know, it's interesting. So Florida is now the third most popular state. You know, the top four are California, Texas, Florida and New York. New York, California and Texas all have strong kind of identities that people know, California was the dream. New York is New York City and the Hurley Burley and all of that. Texas, where I sadly, I passed two years in Huntsville, Texas so that I don't talk about too much. But- You were in Huntsville? I was living outside the prison. So yeah. Okay. I was like, wow. But Texas is its own country, its own region. It has its, you know, does Florida have an identity or a culture that can, you know, galvanize the nation or can it become the next big thing in kind of American identity? I think it can, but it's a great question, Nick, because my brother, when he got elected, I went to his inauguration and same size crowd as my inauguration in 1998. Not everything is bigger in Texas but there were no American flags. There were all Texas flags, hundreds of them all around. You know, fast forward to my inauguration, there were like, there wasn't even a Florida flag on top of the state capitol. There were American flags though all over the place but we don't have a, I think we have an emerging identity but it's not clear. It's more, Florida is a group of regions in many ways and South Florida is very different than the Panhandle. It would be helpful to have a sense of shared identity for the state. I've always advocated that. I don't think we've reached our full potential there. And by the way, I kind of like that for our own country. What is the shared identity that we have in our country now? We're tribal and we're broken ourselves up in all these disparate parts. I mean, Florida does mirror the United States in that way in some fashions but it's a more positive. Very much so, yeah. Positive place. People are proud to live in Jacksonville, proud to live in Tampa but they're not necessarily, that doesn't always translate to proud to live in Florida. Going back to the concept of a shared identity for America in our history, we've had various ones including, we were the Puritans and the Pilgrims, we were the Westward explorers, we were a nation of immigrants was certainly a huge one that I think about a lot. All of my grandparents were immigrants from Europe that ended sometime around the end of the Cold War, it seems. Do you have, like what is, do you have an idea of what a cultural identity for America that is inclusive enough so that everybody who's here feels part of it but also not so loose that it becomes meaningless? Yeah, I mean, I think this will sound like a cliche and that's sad that it does but I would say the shared identity should be that it doesn't matter where you start in life it doesn't matter where you were born. It doesn't, what matters is that you have a chance to rise up and that your hard work will be rewarded and that you'll be part of the exceptionalism of our country where people irrespective of where they start in life have a chance to succeed and that's being challenged like never before and a lot of people don't believe that that's the case anymore and so they resort to more government or they resort to collective action rather than pursuing their dreams as they see fit. I think America at its best is crazy, chaotic, two steps forward, one step back. It's not planned out. The great businesses, the great ideas that will emerge in the post pandemic era, I'm really excited about history's repletive examples of this and at a time when we really need that sense of shared identity, I think it's eroded to the point where it may be of all the things that trouble me, that's that and the fiscal deficit are the two things that trouble me the most. All right, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for talking to reason, Governor Jeb Bush. Thanks Nick.