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This is Move The Needle with Rob Kaplan. Where we talk to people who lead, innovate, and inspire. Today on the Move The Needle, Rob talks with former Florida governor and presidential candidate Jeb Bush about his family, business and what he learned in politics.
Governor Bush was the 43rd governor of the state of Florida, serving from 1999 through 2007. During his two terms, Governor Bush remained true to his conservative principles, cutting taxes, vetoing earmarks, and championing major reform of government programs.
Under his leadership, Florida was on the forefront of consumer healthcare advances, led the nation in job growth, and launched and accelerated restoration of America's Everglades. In education, Florida raised academic standards, required accountability in public schools and created the most ambitious school choice programs in the nation. As a result, Florida students have made the greatest gains in academic achievement and Florida is one of a handful of states to significantly narrow the achievement gap.
Prior to and after his tenure as Florida's chief executive, Governor Bush has been actively involved in the private sector, helping to build the largest full service real estate company in South Florida and owning and operating successful consulting and investing businesses. Governor Bush is also the Chairman and Founding Partner of Finback Investment Partners which is a private equity firm that takes active minority interest in middle market and growth-stage companies.
Governor Bush maintains his passion for improving the quality of education for students by serving as the chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a national non-profit organization he founded to work with education leaders, teachers, parents, and advocates to develop and implement reforms that lead to rising student achievement.
Governor Bush has written three books, Profiles in Character; Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution; and Reply All: A Governor's Story 1999-2007.
Governor Bush lives in Miami with his wife Columba. They have three children and five grandchildren.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Move the Needle' and Jeb Bush Interview
00:00:07
Speaker
This is Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan, where we talk to people who lead, innovate and inspire. I was a Texas-born, Republican, conservative, bicultural, bilingual dude from Miami. You know, that may sound normal.
00:00:28
Speaker
Today on Move the Needle, Rob talks with former Florida governor and presidential candidate Jeb Bush about his family, business, and what he learned in politics.
00:00:39
Speaker
I've been an admirer of Jeb Bush for a long time. I was a fan of his when he was governor of Florida and obviously watched closely as he ran for president in 2016. It wasn't really until the last couple of years that we got introduced and found a couple of things that we could do together and I got to know him much better and my opinion of him went up even more.
00:01:04
Speaker
John Ellis Bush. So how old were you when they started calling you Jeb?
Jeb Bush's Early Life and Education
00:01:09
Speaker
Zero. I was born in Midland, Texas, 70 years ago. Whenever they decided to name me, I don't know if they did it right before or right after my birth. They said, we're going to call him John Ellis Bush if he's a little guy. And we're going to use the name Jeb, my initials, J-E-B.
00:01:27
Speaker
Rob, I fought a long, lonely battle against acronyms because in government, you know, there's so many of them. And someone finally pointed out as I was doing one of my rants about whatever acronym I was railing against, he said, Jeff, why are you so upset about acronyms when you yourself are one?
00:01:45
Speaker
But it's worked out pretty good. I like the name. It's worked out well. Jeb, as he mentioned, was born in Midland. And then when he was six years old, the Bush family moved to Houston, Texas. Jeb went to initially to school in Houston, Texas, then went to Andover, Exeter. But I understand, and I'll let you comment on this whatever way you would like, that you were a pretty rambunctious student when you were in your middle school and maybe a little bit into your high school years.
00:02:16
Speaker
What do you mean by rambunctious? Did I have a bad attitude? Yeah. Any discipline issues growing up? Um, a little bit. Um, when you, I went to Andover from when I was 14 and it was like, it was very Darwinian back then. Now it's all nurturing and kids that go to these elite schools are, you know, they're nurtured more than they're told, dust yourself off, uh, and get back in the game where there's 10 people that want to replace you. So, uh, in that kind of environment,
00:02:44
Speaker
You know, you get cynical pretty quick and you're taught to challenge everything and I did. It actually turned out to be a pretty good experience because challenging basic assumptions is a pretty good life skill that can be really helpful in business and certainly in politics or running complicated, dysfunctional things, all the things that I've tried to do in my life. Being stretched academically, wavy on it where I thought I could be and learning how to learn and how to challenge
00:03:11
Speaker
things became skill sets that were quite useful. In talking to Jeb and hearing about his story at the University of Texas, I could identify with a lot of aspects of his life. He was a late bloomer in terms of being a student. He didn't do very well in high school in his early years starting college, but then he buckled down and he really applied himself and he was a superb student. He graduated early.
00:03:40
Speaker
He met his wife when he was 17 and got married very young. He is, in many ways, when he describes his college experience, he struck me as a regular guy. If you think about it, the normal coursework back then was 15 credit hours a semester. And if you did that four times, did it four years, you would graduate with 120 credit, which is what was required.
00:04:10
Speaker
And now they measure full-time students for 12 credit hours and they measure degree completion for a four-year degree in six years. And I work part-time, maybe that got to 60 total hours. I mean, 90% of every week since I've been an adult has been working for longer than 60 hours. So my attitude is if you're 19 years old,
00:04:34
Speaker
It shouldn't be that hard to be able to work 60 hours. And we should make sure that kids graduate from college, at least in four years. And if they can do it quicker, the courses ought to be available for them to do it. That kind of goes against the business model of higher education, where the longer you stay, the more they make. That's interesting. And people should know you graduated magna cumulata. So you're, you're talking very modestly, you're a varsity tennis, you're a magna cumulata.
00:04:59
Speaker
and you expedited your coursework. So you're, that all is fairly unusual, I would say, comparing to other people. It makes me less tolerant of younger people that complain about the workload because I wish I had their energy at the age of, you know, I'd like to be 20 years old again, knowing what I know now, of course, but work is a virtue. And I was motivated because I wanted to marry my wife. So the quicker I got out of school, the faster I can marry her.
00:05:27
Speaker
We kind of accelerated that a bit too. So three months before I got, I graduated, I had married her and we started our life's journey. Wow. And I know started your business career first in Texas.
00:05:42
Speaker
And then you went into commercial real estate in Florida. Talk a little bit about how you decided to make the move from Texas to Florida, which obviously set the stage for the rest of your life in Florida.
Career Beginnings and Family Influence
00:05:55
Speaker
I went to work for Texas Commerce Bank, which was a premier bank at the time in Houston. And in between those two, you know, the journey to Miami and beginning my work, I worked for the chairman that was the assistant to the CEO of the bank.
00:06:12
Speaker
And he came to me one day and said, I want you to open up our office in Caracas, Venezuela. I'd never taken an accounting course or finance course in school. I was a Latin American studies major. And back then, you know, I didn't say, well, I'll think about it. I said, sure, let me in. And then I explained to my wife where we were going. We had a 15 month old and a three month old child, children and, and.
00:06:39
Speaker
Caracas was an extraordinary experience because it was the second most expensive city in the world. It was booming and I learned a massive amount and that was transformative. And then I came back to work in my dad's presidential campaign in 1980. Yeah, 79 and then, and then the Reagan Bush campaign in 80 and the catalyst for moving to Miami was I didn't get, I got an offer I could, I could refuse at Texas commerce. They really didn't give me credit for all of the campaigning that I thought added value to my life.
00:07:10
Speaker
I met a guy who's a phenomenal person, Armando Credena, and we formed a partnership in 1980. I moved there. I was comfortable with, my kids were, when we moved back from Caracas, they didn't speak English, they spoke Spanish. You moved from Caracas then to Miami, Florida, and that's where you went into this partnership. We went from, I went from Miami back to Houston to work in my dad's campaign as a volunteer, and then to Miami,
00:07:38
Speaker
I felt Miami was, my wife's from Mexico. We've always lived a bicultural life, if you will. And I thought my kids would be more comfortable. And it was kind of crazy at the time. I thought I wanted to get out from my dad's shadow, which turns out the shadow didn't end at the outskirts of Harris County, Texas. But that was my thinking at the time. And I wanted a place that I felt like would be comfortable for my wife and children.
00:08:08
Speaker
which turned out to be true. It's interesting. You had almost at any one point in time, two careers in parallel. It's, you were very successful businessperson, very entrepreneurial. And yet during that time in the eighties, I, as you said, you ran, you worked on your father's 1980 campaign. You then during the eighties became chairman of the Dade County Republican party.
00:08:32
Speaker
You were in 87 and 88 secretary of commerce in Florida. And then in 1988, you then worked on your father's presidential campaign. But in those years when you weren't in the government, you were a very successful business person. I have some regrets in the sense that I see how my sons, my five grandchildren, I see how my sons and daughters in law
00:09:01
Speaker
are really focused on their kids. And my children are pretty resilient, but they didn't get the attention that my grandchildren get. And I don't know what the best way to do it, but I was doing a lot of different things, building the business and being involved in civic stuff and certainly being involved in politics. I can thank the patience and love of my wife and the work that she did because the kids turned out pretty good.
00:09:31
Speaker
I'm not sure I would recommend the lifestyle that I led. I think being a little more focused probably would have made more sense. Good evening and welcome to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tonight, the debate for governor of Florida. Two men who want to head this state in the next four years. Lawton Childs and Jeb Bush in a race too close to call. It's probably of the campaigns I've run. It was the most rewarding one in some ways, the bonds, the friendships,
00:10:01
Speaker
on it. It was, it was an amazing effort. One, a little more flippant lesson is don't run against a guy who's never lost. Lawton Childs had something that wasn't necessarily his five point plan. It was just a deep connection with voters. People trusted him. And even in a wave election, you know, 94 was a pretty good year to run as a Republican. I lost it. It was close, but I, but I lost, but the more important
00:10:26
Speaker
Lesson was if you're going to run for office, you have to show your heart as well as your mind. I had white papers galore, but when I got attacked, the main attack was that I was going to take away social security, which was kind of odd since the state has nothing to do with it. But it did suppress the vote amongst elderly Republicans particularly. It was a smart move, not necessarily fair, but smart. And I didn't, not enough people shrugged their shoulders and said, I don't believe that.
00:10:56
Speaker
Cause I didn't really kind of give people, tell people why I wanted to be governor. I gave them the things that I wanted to do as governor. And, um, that's an important lesson because you have to develop first that connection with people. They have to believe you. Yeah. Trust you.
Campaign Insights and Authentic Connections
00:11:14
Speaker
They have to feel like you're on their side and that's not related to issues or ideas. That's more related to just a deeper.
00:11:23
Speaker
a personal kind of relationship, which is not easy to do in a, you know, much harder to do now, but in the state of Florida, pretty tough. But to show them who you are and be authentic. Authenticity is the word I was missing, exactly. And so fast forward to 98, I had the same ideas, but instead of just calling for, you know, a pretty provocative reform in the K-12 education, I went to visit 250 schools.
00:11:50
Speaker
You know, instead of saying our child welfare system didn't work and have a white paper, you know, I would spend a day sitting in a, in the judicial chair of a, in a dependency court for eight hours listening, seeing the child welfare system unfold in front of my eyes and it's massive dysfunction and the tragedy of.
00:12:11
Speaker
children being abandoned and abused by a dysfunctional system. So I think you get their drift, right? I do. You connected with people. On a human level. And then I got to share my ideas. If all you're doing is feeling people's pain and you're not offering a solution to the reason why they're hurting, you're not even halfway there. But the first step is that first step. It was the lesson of 94 and I applied it in 98.
00:12:40
Speaker
Yes. So the other thing that's so missing now, Rob, that I wish would come back is people being capable and willing to take the risk of advancing ideas to fix the things that are broken rather than attack the other person. What surprised me about Jeb Bush?
00:13:00
Speaker
And I think what sets him apart as I got to know him is one, he's very common sense oriented, very practical, doesn't talk in political ease or technical jargon. He speaks very plainly and he's got very common sense views on the big issues facing this country. So this was a real ideas and connection with people campaign. I offered up like six pretty meaningful
00:13:30
Speaker
specific programs that were validated by people and I campaigned on them in a very open, direct way. And then I got lucky and I won and I had to do them. You kind of declare a mandate, who knows if you have one or not, but I declared, I said, I want to do these seven things or six things.
00:13:49
Speaker
I did them. In 2002, you were the first two term governor that was Republican. And I gather in the history of Florida, Democrats had gotten reelected, but a Republican had never been reelected governor. 2002 election was the first time that a Republican had been reelected. And
00:14:09
Speaker
The Republican Party became the dominant party right about that. And since then, it's remained that way and even stronger now as people have moved in from other parts of the country. And I notice also, and this would be the envy of Republicans nationwide, you got something like in excess of 60% of the Hispanic vote, you got a sizable percentage of the white female vote.
00:14:35
Speaker
you did better than most Republicans do with African Americans, but probably you were still disappointed on that. How were you able to build that coalition? I embraced diversity in the right way. I mean, now we're in this DEI world where it's all, we've created a system around these things that I think creates a pathway for a very different version of what I consider to be important, which is allowing people of diverse backgrounds that may not be asked to join the team
00:15:06
Speaker
to invite them to do so with a shared, the shared identity is, or the shared platform is, are the ideas to be implemented. So we created, I appointed more women, more African-Americans, more Hispanics to the judiciary than my successors, predecessors and successors, I guess, you know, the cabinet I had, the boards, all of that, there was a real focus on giving people a chance that otherwise, you know, been excluded.
00:15:35
Speaker
So having the humility to make it about a broader number of people and a cause that was bigger than oneself, you know, it was helpful. And then I campaigned, you know, I campaigned across the country and across the state in a way that asked for everybody's support. You know, today we're so polarized. It might be hard to do that, but back then it was, uh, I think, you know, there was a different, I mean, there was, there was rewards for reaching across the aisle, if you will. And I, you know, I'm a,
00:16:05
Speaker
I had a pretty solid conservative record. I didn't shy away from my views and we did very conservative things, but we did it in an inclusive way. And so I think that helped. And I ran against a good man in my reelection, but he wasn't a good candidate. It's better to run against a bad candidate than a good one. And I think you said a key word to me, inclusive.
00:16:28
Speaker
What does, that word gets spoken a lot about today, but I noticed many leaders struggle with inclusion. What does it, what did inclusion as governor mean to you? I was kind of an aberration. I was a Texas born Republican conservative, bi-cultural, bilingual dude from Miami. You know, that may sound normal, but in Florida politics, that was, that was different.
00:16:55
Speaker
You know, what I saw was that historically Democrats at the state level kind of controlled things. And if you went to the University of Florida and you were blue key, which is the honor society there you'd end up being governor. You'd be on the Supreme court. You would be leaders of the chain state chamber of commerce. There was kind of a, and you were probably a white male.
00:17:21
Speaker
good people, I'm not being critical of them, but there's a ton of people in Florida that are very diverse and very far removed from that kind of pathway to being involved in service to the state. I want to make sure people that are listening understand this wasn't like we're going to do a, we're going to pick, we're going to pick someone because of their ethnicity or nationality or race or gender. And that's it. We were picking people that were really talented, that
00:17:51
Speaker
happen to be diverse as defined back then still to this day. So it's a little different than now where people, some of our institutions and our society had been captured by an ideology that is driven not by necessarily, and these people could be talented, but their race or their sexual identity or their gender or their ethnicity.
00:18:18
Speaker
is it drives the conversation. We need a different approach. The new approach, I think people are rejecting. In its best form, you want an opportunity society. You want people to achieve earned success and you want everybody to have a chance to achieve it. But you don't. And so you reject the idea of the only path forward for certain people is
00:18:44
Speaker
collective action, somehow it's not possible for certain groups to succeed and for the white hierarchy as described by these folks, you're privileged. And if you don't admit your privilege, then you're as bad as the most overt racist. That ideology has become more accepted in certain circles and now people are pushing back.
00:19:09
Speaker
Let's roll forward.
Leadership Choices: NFL and Governance
00:19:11
Speaker
I'm going to mention a couple of things and we'll do this briefly toward the end of your second term. I understand you had the opportunity or at least were approached about being commissioner of the NFL. Yeah. And for listeners, I mean National Football League that NFL and I had the owners from Florida were supportive of the idea.
00:19:33
Speaker
It's got to be one of the top three or four jobs on the planet. And Roger Goodell's actually done a really good job if you look at the valuations of these businesses, the viewership. I read something recently at the top 50 shows last year on TV. The NFL makes up like 45 of them. That's right. So why were you unable? I know I saw your public reasoning.
00:19:58
Speaker
your internal workings on that decision? Well, the public reasons were the private ones as well, which were, it was in February, I think, of my last year. Yes. When I kind of, you know, I kept thinking. You would have had to leave early. I would have to leave early. I put my hand on a Bible to swear to uphold the Constitution. And in my mind, that meant for four years, not for three years and two months. I just wasn't comfortable leaving.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yes. And I don't know if I would have gotten the job or not, but I wanted everybody to know that I love being governor. It was the greatest job in the world and the enthusiasm I had for the job on day one.
00:20:41
Speaker
It didn't subside in February of the eighth year. And, um, I love serving the people I really cared for. So, yeah, you do a great job. Although I see, you know, if you look at Goodell's, it's a good story. He's, he's, I mean, he's making 40 million a year now. I think you made a good question. You know, there's, there's a rare moment once in a while where I said that possibly could have been me.
00:21:22
Speaker
You know, I always feel welcome at Miami Dade College. This is a place that welcomes everyone with their hearts set on the future. A place where hope leads to achievement and striving leads to success. For all of us, it is just the place to be in the campaign that begins today.
00:21:57
Speaker
Now, after your term ended, you went back into business.
00:22:03
Speaker
continued your business success. And then as has been well-documented, we roll into 2016 and, uh, you decide you want to run for president of the United States.
Immigration Reform and Political Challenges
00:22:15
Speaker
I'm going to weave that whole experience into one issue and then, uh, and then a couple other questions. But one of the big issues in that campaign, which you had spent a lot of time on in your career was immigration.
00:22:31
Speaker
And I think the immigration issue got twisted, distorted in many ways. And you've heard me say before, and we've talked about, you know, the workforce growth in this country is decelerating where it's down to close to zero or a quarter of 1%. And if we're gonna grow GDP, we need to grow the workforce and immigration's a part of that. How did you experience that whole immigration debate as part of the 2016 campaign? It was difficult because I had written a book
00:23:01
Speaker
14, called immigration wars with my friend, Clint Bullock, who's on the Arizona Supreme Court now. We created, we proposed a conservative alternative to, for immigration reform, which is necessary for our country, for our dynamism, for our vitality, for our demography, for our workforce. There's lots of reasons.
00:23:26
Speaker
why it would be important to get beyond where we are today. But to this day, those recommendations I still believe in, but the 16 environment is no different than it is today, which is immigration is a wedge issue on both sides. Conservatives don't want to talk about reforming legal immigration or dealing with the people that are here illegally or the dreamers.
00:23:56
Speaker
until the border's controlled. The border hasn't been controlled. So that wedge issue of frustration with the lack of border security, which I totally understand, has shut down any other conversation. And then on the left, there are a lot of people on the left that think this is a great way over the long haul to build a constituency for voting for Democrats. I don't believe that's the case, by the way, because I think
00:24:25
Speaker
History shows that immigrant groups evolve and change and their voting habits change over time as well. But I think that is the notion. And, um, particularly the progressive wing of their party, they, they don't call it open borders, but they're, they're pretty sympathetic to allowing people to come in irrespective of what their documentation is. So it's a total mess. And, um, you know, I got into the bus saw in 2016, president Trump in very graphic terms kind of
00:24:56
Speaker
uh, advocated a view that a lot of people, you know, were thinking that wouldn't, they didn't say it out loud, if you know what I mean. I mean, he tapped into, uh, a deep resentment that the rule of law didn't apply on our border. And as I said, I respect that, but at the time, by the way, um, some more than half the people that came into our country illegally came with a legal visa and overstate.
00:25:26
Speaker
I don't know what it is now, but the argument was synthesized and simplified into the border. You know, coming up with, rather than playing on people's legitimate angst and anger and anxiety about this,
00:25:44
Speaker
Um, I offered solutions on how to fix it and people, people were not interested in the fix. They wanted people to, they wanted candidates to really be on their side and their, their feelings of discuss for the, you know, for the current system. Right. Demonize, demonize the other. Yeah. And Trump was, you know, to this day, he's pretty good at that. That's his, I'd say that's his main skill set. But what a shame because the opportunity to control the border.
00:26:10
Speaker
is there. I mean, one of the things that we could do, Biden ultimately is moving in this direction. He's instead of doing what he should have done to begin with, you know, he's moving towards saying, if you're, if you have a well-founded fear of persecution, you can't just walk across the border and make your claim. Millions of people in the last three years have done that and 95% of them will not, their claims will be rejected in four years with an overcrowded immigration court system.
00:26:39
Speaker
And then their deportation hearing will come and their deportation order will come and they're not showing up for that. So all these people have come in for reasons. They want to feed their family. They want a better life. And you and I have talked about the fact, reframing this from another point of view, we're an aging country. We're very highly leveraged at the government level. We've got to grow GDP to help de-leverage or manage this debt.
00:27:08
Speaker
And our workforce growth is, is basically decelerated and figuring out proper legal immigration. I know you and I've talked about is central if we're going to be able to keep growing. I was in an advisory board meeting yesterday. Rob and the CEO of the business went through the workforce issues for healthcare and
00:27:33
Speaker
The number of doctors and nurses and anesthesiologists, the demand for all of the healthcare workforce sector is growing exponentially as we age. The number of people that are available is decreasing at an alarming rate. It is a crisis for
00:27:57
Speaker
all sorts of people. It's a crisis for hospitals. It's a crisis for providers, but it's also a crisis for the quality of care, particularly for the elderly. And the solution is we got to improve our workforce training. We have to improve the throughput, if you will, for higher education. We need to make
00:28:17
Speaker
pathways from high school on, but these shortages are really crushing us. And so part of the answer is an economically driven immigration system to deal with these unmet needs. It's not the only answer, but it is an important part of it. And we're languishing on the political wedge issue of border security and not fixing it. And we're not even getting to the point where legal immigration should be jumped
00:28:46
Speaker
You know, we could create a huge surge of productivity if we embrace the Canada model or the Australian model. Just doing that alone would jumpstart our economy in many ways and not at the expense of working people already here. The Canada model is more of a quote unquote skills-based, employer-based system where you backward integrate and who you'll let in based on the needs of businesses.
00:29:13
Speaker
And it's been discussed widely in the government that just can't seem to get it done. And, you know, the issues you talked about, I hear from not only businesses broadly, but school superintendents are widely talking about that they're losing teachers who are making 50, 60 grand a year because there's so many other options.
00:29:35
Speaker
and they cannot find young people to take their place. And so we've got education challenges in our public schools because we can't find enough teachers. You go through every industry and it's probably at the top of the list in challenges we face. It's definitely the number one issue for businesses. And I think for our society, the United States has historically been unique in that we, at the right time, we've, we seem to have this ability in the past, at least to go through a process of reading
00:30:04
Speaker
our entitlement programs, our immigration issues, we're stuck. And it's, we're not as dynamic because of it. And it's very frustrating, but you know, would you rather be here with those challenges, you know, with the potential of fixing or any other place in the world? I'd still want to be here, but what a missed opportunity. So in our remaining minutes, I'm going to do a lightning round of a few questions here.
00:30:30
Speaker
Would you ever run for public office again? I want to be married to my wife. The answer is no. Strong memo to follow. You must get approached though. I'm sure you do. Just talking with you. It's hard not to approach you and say, Hey G, would you consider X, Y or Z run for president again? It comes up quite a bit. And I actually think the answer is no, but I do think
00:30:54
Speaker
There's a broader issue, which is part of our stasis and the lack of dynamism also is that people cling to these political positions way past where they should be. And it's time for the old folks to get off the stage. To be young and dynamic, we need young and dynamic leaders. You know, we have a Trump and Biden rematch. Good God, man. I mean, 330 million people. And that's what we come up with. I just think.
00:31:19
Speaker
And it's not just them, it's others in political office, particularly in DC that are way past their age. So if I'm gonna practice what I preach, that would be a second reason why I don't worry. More on the lightning round. Advice you'd give to a, quote unquote, younger person who's just beginning their career. Work hard. You can out compete everybody if you, particularly their age. Working hard, work as a virtue, be a grinder.
00:31:47
Speaker
listening to all this, you could get discouraged at times. What is one action you would suggest or piece of advice you would give to people listening on an action they could take that would make a positive difference in their city or the state or in the country?
Advice for Community Impact
00:32:05
Speaker
I think the most important thing is not to default with the top down solution, not to blame DC for every ill. And, you know, I think the end is near because of dysfunction in a far removed place like Washington.
00:32:17
Speaker
The key is to act on your sense of consciousness, act on your beliefs, act on your compassion for others, and there's just a whole myriad of ways to do that. We're a bottom-up country at our best, and in order for that to be true, we have to act, not talk. Get off the sideline and engage, and you'll find it fulfilling for certain, and it can really improve the human condition.
00:32:41
Speaker
I'm a father of two young boys, many parents listening to this either with grown kids or young children that are growing up and they're the future of our country. What advice would you give to parents on how to get their children ready or advise their children on how to make a positive difference in this country? Make sure that they're being taught how to read properly. Believe it or not, there's a huge number of kids that are taught the wrong way to read and they struggle because of that.
00:33:11
Speaker
Keep children off social media as long as you can. For them to develop skills amongst themselves, to let them be outside and resolve their disputes amongst themselves and don't hover over them. Let them learn how to grow up and interact with people. It's so important not to get isolated on the internet. I think social media is really dangerous, particularly for young girls. You gotta let kids grow. You can't like try to do, you know, do everything for them.
00:33:41
Speaker
I think there's a little bit too much of that right now. Governor Bush, thank you so much for your leadership, for your service, for all that you do. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. Rob, thank you for everything that you've done as well. And it's been a joy.
00:33:58
Speaker
next time on Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan. You've had a couple of disciplinary issues, which I think pushed you to have to take some difficult stances with at least one or two of your owners. It came out in the fall of 2021 that players had been subject to emotional and sexual abuse.
00:34:20
Speaker
The unusual trip Jessica Berman took to become commissioner of the fastest-growing sports league on American TV, and we hear about the rough road she hit the minute she started. That's on the next Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan. Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan is produced and edited by Sam Zaff and Scott Richardson, and I'm executive producer Renele Golden. We want to thank Michelle Brown and Zorik's team from Hello Studios for help with production and logistics.
00:34:50
Speaker
Do not forget to subscribe to Move the Needle wherever you get your podcasts and to Rob's YouTube channel. Until next time, this was Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan.