Eight of the last nine presidential elections have seen a Bush or a Clinton vying for a spot in the White House.
The only election since 1980 that didn’t feature a Bush or a Clinton in some role was back in 2012, though a Bush and Clinton have only squared off head-to-head one time, in 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated President George H. W. Bush.
2016 seems likely to bring the two families back into the arena. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – son to H.W. and brother to W. – is angling for the Republican nomination and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – wife of bill – is the odds-on favorite to be the Democrat in November.
Like any decades-old political relationship, how the Clintons and the Bushes have interacted has changed as the years wore on.
After that icy 1992 campaign, members of the Bush family helped campaign against Clinton in 1996, and Clinton returned fire when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000. George W. Bush, by the way, ran in part to “restore honor and dignity” to the office of the Presidency. The implication there is that Clinton tarnished it.
It took two natural disasters and the comfort of being out of office to bring the former presidents all together. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005, former Presidents H.W. Bush and Clinton became friends when they partnered to raise relief funds. Clinton and George W. Bush helped raise money for Haiti after a devastating earth quake there in 2010. In 2013, while speaking at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, Clinton joked that he had become the Bush family’s “black sheep son.”
Can the two sides weather another election? In 2014, when asked about the potential match up, former President George W. Bush told CNN that he believed his brother would beat his adopted “sister-in-law.”
Who’s to say that would be the end of it. Why not Chelsea Clinton vs. Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Or, further down the line, Jenna Bush Hager’s daughter Mila and Chelsea Clinton’s daughter Charlotte will be eligible to run against each other in the 2052 election.
