I don’t watch Fox News but I understand from Yahoo that George Herbert Walker Bush touted his son Jeb for President in a Fox interview. First, the disclaimer: I do not like Jeb Bush. I interviewed him when I worked for Miami Today and he was haughty and overbearing, refusing to answer routine questions and repeatedly putting me in my place. I guess he wasn’t all that impressed with Miami Today, or maybe it was this poor ol’ Jamaican boy that drew his disdain.

But even if I liked Jeb (which is not his given name, by the way; he is really “John Ellis Bush”), I would cringe at the thought of him as America’s President. If you think George W. is bad, wait until you experience Jeb. He is not just two-faced; he has as many faces as the Man in the Moon. And I don’t like any of them.

Jeb (with parents in photo above) made a fortune by selling Everglades-polluting properties, developed by his multimillionaire Cuban-born business partner Amanda Codina, and has left a legacy of ticky-tacky houses all over the South and across the Caribbean. Yet he somehow convinced the media that he is some kind of environmentalist. And while he poses as one of those “conservative” moral crusaders, his personal ethics are open to question:

He defaulted on a $4.56 million loan during the infamous S&L scandal of the late 1980s, and American taxpayers ended up paying all but $506,000 of the tab.

And according to Wikepedia:

Jeb Bush was also on the payroll of Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place. Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC. “I want to be very wealthy,” Jeb Bush told the Miami News when questioned during that period.

(Recarey was convicted on various charges, but he fled the country. He remains on the FBI’s list of international fugitives wanted for fraud and bribery. According to Politico.com, he had a long-standing relationship with Miami Mafia godfather Santo Trafficante, Jr.)

Jeb marketed water pumps to poor countries around the world, relying on U.S.-backed loans when President Bush was in the White House. According to the St. Petersburg Times, his take was $648,250.

But it’s Jeb’s policies that are anathema to me. He is anti-labor and pro-life, a devout Roman Catholic and a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus, a school choice activist, a believer in privatizing government services, a conservative propagandist and neo-con think tank founder who believes in American world domination, a death penalty advocate who oversaw 21 executions as Florida’s Governor and never agreed to commute a death sentence. In short, he makes people like Sarah Palin look like tree-huggin’ liberals.

The problem is that this guy is political dynamite. He has won high media praise as the two-term governor of Florida, despite (or because of) his extreme right-wing policies. Fluent in Spanish and married to a native of Mexico, he has lived and worked extensively throughout Latin America. Not surprisingly, he is the darling of Florida’s Hispanic community.  He has influential allies in the African-American community and (as you can imagine) powerful political connections. And he is no dummy. Unlike brother George, he was an honor-roll student.

The specter of a Jeb Bush presidency could keep strong men awake at night. But thankfully, America might be spared that horror. Bush the Elder conceded in the Fox interview that “right now is probably a bad time, because we’ve had enough Bushes in there.”

I can only pray that the right time for another Bush may never come.