In the modern era, political actors and observers often fail to distinguish between the different levels of government that make up the American system. If a person is in favor of a given program at the state or local level, it is presumed that they must want to implement it nationally. Federalism be damned; it’s 2015, dontchaknow? We don’t need all of that talk about the consent of the governed.

This being so, it is encouraging to see Jeb Bush drawing a clear contrast between the responsibilities that are best held by the federal government and the responsibilities that are best held by the states. Praising Tennessee’s “free community college initiative” as a ”great program” during a speech at the border yesterday, Bush assiduously stopped short of suggesting that it should be a model for the country writ large. The Hill reports:

Jeb Bush threw his support behind a Tennessee plan to give two years of community college to students tuition-free on Monday, the same plan that helped inspire President Obama’s similar proposal earlier this year.
“We’ve got to make sure that we can get a four-year degree done in four years,” the presidential hopeful said in answer to a question Monday during a press conference after a meeting on the U.S.-Mexican border in Texas.
“There are great programs around the country — one of the ones I most admire is a project called Tennessee Promise, where every student that participates gets their community college education, at least for the first two years, debt free, free of tuition.”

Earlier in the year, Obama said something almost identical to this (I disagree, for what it’s worth). But he then went on to add:

Obama announced his plan in January in Tennessee, where he applauded the state for its program.
x“Now, the good news is, you already do something like this in Tennessee. You call it Tennessee Promise,” he said.
“We thought why not just build on what works? So we’re going to call it ‘America’s College Promise.’”
The president would fund his plan through $320 billion in tax hikes.

Jeb, by contrast, left his praise where it belongs:

Bush has come out against Obama’s federal plan, panning it at a New Hampshire speech as “political [and] poll driven,” according to USA Today.
“Governor Bush supports a state’s right to innovate and find solutions to our education challenges, whether it be in K-12 or in the higher education community,” Allie Brandenburger, a Bush spokeswoman told The Hill in a statement.
The former Florida governor has been a longtime education advocate and launched the Foundation for Excellence in Education in 2008. He’s a vocal supporter of voucher programs and pitched “total voucherization” during an education summit last week.

Bluntly, the Bush family does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to the nationalization of education. Jeb has rightly been on the end of a great deal of criticism for his enthusiasm for Common Core, and his brother George deserves to be knocked for the disaster that was No Child Left Behind. Whether Jeb really believes that higher education is a state issue I do not know. That he feels compelled to say that he does, however, is a good sign indeed.