Aiken, S.C. – Jeb Bush didn’t envision his campaign unfolding this way, but his stump speeches increasingly, and perhaps unconsciously, reflect the fact that he is responding either to the environment created by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, to attacks on his family, or to both.

At Tuesday evening’s candidate forum at the University of South Carolina’s Aiken campus, Bush didn’t mention Trump explicitly, but explained to the crowd of approximately 1,500 “why we need to have somebody who has a steady hand.” He promised he would lead with “no grandiosity.”

If that was a shot at Trump, the subsequent portion of his remarks also seemed a tacit response to the gauntlet he has laid down. “Washington needs a disrupter,” Bush said. What proceeded was an attempt to cast himself as that. And regardless of how true to fact the portrayal is, Jeb Bush just doesn’t come across as somebody who is going to wreak havoc on the political establishment. He tried to convince the crowd otherwise. “In Florida, I turned the whole place upside down,” he said. “I challenged every aspect of spending. He went on to call for Congress to adopt a balanced budget amendment.

And, more strongly than I’ve heard him do so before, he extolled his family. He said that if he had one wish — “If a fairy godmother landed on my shoulder” — it would be that every child in America is born to parents with the wisdom and judgment of his own. As a kid, he recalled, he realized he’d have to content himself with finding satisfaction in becoming half the man his father is, and he thinks he’s accomplished that.

However unusual the political environment may be, Bush’s remarks, including the kind words he lavished on his family, went over well with this crowd, which gave him a pair of standing ovations.