Jeb Bush's new website and the first chapter of his ebook is here
02/10/2015
At 11:57 p.m. Monday night, Jeb Bush's new website - jebemails.com - went online. There you can see the first chapter of his e-book touching on the emails he got, and responded to, during his first days as Florida governor.
The first chapter is called, "Please Make It Happen."
It opens with a quote from Bush's January 5, 1999 inaugural address:
"Let state government trust Florida’s communities to confront their everyday challenges, to advance the ideas that will shape our state. The best and brightest ideas do not come from the state capital, but from the untapped human capital that resides in our diverse communities."
Bush explains why he became such a huge fan of email.
. . .no time was more exhilarating than those first few weeks.
Finally we could act on what we had been talking about. We were ready to go to work. However, I didn’t want to disappear into the governor’s office.
In my inauguration speech, I said, “public servants must have the humility to listen to and trust Florida’s head, heart and soul.” And I meant it.
The best ideas would come from outside of our state capital. From Floridians. But now that the campaign was over, how could I keep track of what Floridians were thinking? I needed their energy and passion and wisdom.
Email. Everyone could email me. So they did. Millions of emails came in through our website, but it was when I made my personal email – [email protected] – public that I earned the nickname “The eGovernor.”
The all-but-announced 2016 presidential candidate quickly discovered that Floridians would not be shy about emailing him.
Spending time on email also could be quite humbling.
On some days when I thought I had been just brilliant, I would open up my email and see a number of comments about just how brilliant I had not been.
I got a lot of advice – some of it very helpful, and some that I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out what I had said or done to cause such angst.
It was always eye opening, and certainly kept me on my toes.
All of the former governor's emails have been available prior to this. Crowley Political Report and other news organizations have reported on many of the more than 200,000 emails. The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting has taken the emails and turned them into a searchable database.
The Bush ebook makes a clear effort to present him as a dynamic governor tackling difficult issues from the state budget to education reform. The emails also reveal a governor who considered no item too small for his attention (hounding staff to improve the state website), and every citizen request worthy of response.
Toward the end of this first chapter, Bush writes:
My first month in office was chaotic and exhausting, but exhilarating at every turn as we launched our reform agenda and began to honor the promises and commitments I had made during the campaign. We felt terrific about everything we had accomplished, including getting our first budget ready to be sent to the state legislature in early February.
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