admitted it wasn t convincing, would you authorize that invasion. and from everything i can tell regardless of the theatrics of the past four days the answer to that probably was yes. and i think for a lot of the country, that s what is problematic. s it s not that he can t come to an answer on a hypothetical question. he has this foreign policy view mirrors his brother. and he said hillary clinton said yes at the time, too. and that s something she ll have to answer for. i think the fumbling is an issue for him. i think it suggests a lack of competence. this is the one question he knew he was going to be asked in relation to his brother. why on earth hasn t he got his answer sorted out before this campaign began. and he has a reputation for somebody who is prepared to take a position and stick to it. this time he s gone backwards and forwards. but what is the good answer to that question? and the good answer is going to war is the most defining thing
that this country does and you need a mechanism to get advice to get intelligence and to be really, really careful. and the problem is in the iraq invasion, it turned out will the intelligence, george tenant was in there telling george bush it s a slam dunk don t worry about the intelligence. if you do go to war, what did you to afterwards. and i think the fumbling does tell us something. it tells us about his rep race as preparation, how is he on his feet. i think it s dwarfed by the answer to the second question which is what would you have done in that moment about the authorization. that tells you about the world view and your theories on preemptivepre- preemptive war, what you think the military is good for. i think that tells you a whole lot more than your slip ups to a question on the campaign trail. it s hard to find a republican and put them back in 2003 who would not have
authorized it. ted cruz says only one his name is rand paul. there is rand paul and same thing with democrats. george w. bush ran against two democrats who both well, actually, you had hildlary in 2008 that supported the war and john kerry in 2004 who supported the war. and joe biden and chris dodd. and this is it what made barack obama barack obama. it reminds us the iraq war is not over by the way. al, really quickly i want to follow up on what katty said. what is fascinating, jeb bush had to know this question was coming. customer like mitt romney had to know questions about romneycare was coming. hillary had to know that there would be questions about the server. ron fournier said these are the questions that are coming. be prepared. they re coming. the clintons should have been ready for the torn doughforeign donations questions. you scratch your head saying how does jeb bush prepare on run for
hindsight you would make a different decision? yeah, don t know what it would be, but mistakes were made. reporter: republican rivals seized. knowing what we know now would you have authorized the invasion of iraq is this. of course not. i don t think you can honestly say that if we knew then there was no wmd, that the country should have gone to war. reporter: fair or not, he is taking heat for his brother s policies. bush admits he is reluctant to criticize the former president even when he disagrees. after a shaky week where bush tried to choose his words carefully, he turned heads again when he said this. i m running for president in 2016. reporter: but wait, bush not ready to formally launch a campaign, tried to clarify by being less definitive. are you running for president? i m seriously considering it. thank you, guys. bush added that he hesitated
unfairly by stephanopoulos as the obama campaign feels it was treated in 2008. there was a long list of conservative grievances against stephanopoulos. and the one that still comes up today like an open wound is the contraception line of questioning from the 2012 debate in new hampshire where republicans believe that he originated the war on women. now, i think that s a little bit conspiratorial, i don t blame george stephanopoulos for that. but if you look at that debate, it still leaves such a stinging mark with republicans. and when i was reporting this story, i heard that actually there was an effort by reince priebus and the rnc to block george from moderating any of the republican debates. reince priebus our officer reached out to him and he said we were never going to let him do the debate anyway.