On this weekend’s broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dismissed suggestions he will run for president in 2016 and reiterated his focus on getting Mitt Romney elected.
“I don’t think about it,” Bush said. “I’m not motivated by it. It takes an incredible a discipline and ambition to even think about aspiring to it and I’m not there yet in my life.”
Speculation about a possible Bush run has mounted in recent months. Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” for example, has taken to calling its coverage of next week’s Republican convention “RNC 2012: The road to Jeb Bush 2016.”
Bush, who is slated to address the convention and discuss the topic of education, acknowledged that running this year wouldn’t have been a terrible idea.
“It would have been a good time to run for me because of my tenure as governor ending in 2006, my age, the fact that there’s the challenges of the country — this would have been the time to do it,” Bush said. “But it wasn’t the right time for me. So I’m excited about supporting Mitt Romney. He’s a great guy. I look forward to working on his re-election in 2016 and making Jon Stewart awfully upset during that period of time.”