WASHINGTON - The two dynastic candidates told compelling stories recently about why they should be president, but there has been one big difference: Jeb Bush has taken the political risk of disagreeing with his party's base, and Hillary Clinton hasn't.
Their formal announcement speeches were overdue but offered coherent accounts of why they should be elected. Despite their elite biographies, each tells the bedrock American story well: Work hard, take risks, be yourself, don't give up. Each conveys the self-confidence that comes from knowing who you are, and an intuitive sense of how to govern.
Clinton demonstrated her sometimes overlooked strengths, which include an ability, as she said, "to be resilient no matter what the world throws at you."
Bush was credible when he said that "leaders have to think big." But he had some dreadfully predictable lines, promising to "take care of our troops and our veterans," and warning about a nonexistent danger of U.S. "military inferiority."
In terms of speechifying, I'd give Clinton the win, narrowly, on points. It's on substance that she's worrisome. She seems determined to run as a born-again populist who can emulate left-wing Democrats, such as Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. In the process, she adjusts positions in ways that vitiate her real advantage, which is that she's a strong, experienced, centrist politician.
The most obvious example is trade. Clinton could show leadership if she defied political pressure from her party's base and helped Obama pass a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that she knows is in America's economic and foreign-policy interest. Instead, she apparently listens to the consultants and pressure groups and trims her sails.
Clinton's political expediency becomes more striking when you look at Bush's willingness to challenge the GOP party faithful. He dissents from right-wing orthodoxy on a series of issues, including immigration, climate change and the Common Core educational standards. He can still pander to the base, as on Obama's normalization of relations with Cuba.
Bush was admirably unpolitical in May 31 comments on CBS' "Face the Nation," one of his last major interviews before his announcement. He reaffirmed that he favors a "path to legalized status" for immigrants who are here illegally, rejecting the harsher methods proclaimed (unrealistically) by many GOP candidates.
Bush is also willing to say the unsayable on Social Security reform. This is one of the third-rail issues in American politics, but Bush said he favored raising the retirement age. When moderator Bob Schieffer asked about the often-taboo issue of means-testing for benefits, Bush answered, "I think it ought to be considered, for sure," and when asked if he really meant it, responded: "I do so, yes." This forthrightness was unusual for a presidential candidate, and encouraging.
Bush and Clinton share the dual asset and liability of being familiar brand names. Each struggled with this paradox this past week. "It's nobody's turn," said Bush, with his mother, the former first lady who had said two years ago "We've had enough Bushes," sitting in the front row. Clinton insisted she wasn't "singing the same old song a song called 'Yesterday,'" even as she stressed that she had seen the job of president "up close and personal."
The two dynastic candidates' best hope is to convince the country that they are reliably mainstream leaders, with measured judgment, compared with their relatively inexperienced rivals. If your name is Bush or Clinton, attempting to reinvent yourself isn't a convincing campaign strategy.
Washington Post Writers Group