Dear America,
Marco Rubio scares me. Donald Trump is a buffoon and his presidential prospects are limited. Even if he were to emerge from the ill-conceived Republican nomination process with its incessant debates, he could never be the choice of a majority of voters in this country no matter who ran against him for the Democrats. Jeb Bush is as inept and intellectually deficient as his brother was, and this time around, the Republican base isn't inclined, it seems, toward another sluggish witted Bush. The others are so lacking in broad appeal...and in most cases substance...that their chances are equally minimal. But Rubio, with his facile glibness and his reasonable solutions to some problems, has some appeal to voters for his competency when it comes to putting his ideas before them and what seems a rational approach to problem solving generally. But hidden among those rational ideas--his approach to immigration for example seems fair and balanced--are other notions that are very Reaganesque in an era when Reaganesque is dangerous. For example, with China, and now it seems Russia too, at their peaks of formidability, we cannot lapse into cold-war saber rattling with impunity, and the fact is, there still are large nuclear arsenals in the world, and some of them are in the hands of lunatics. One peremptory move in too provocative a direction could release the crazy of a dictator like North Korea's "Dear Leader," Kim Jung Un, and we could find ourselves launching weapons in retaliation with all the imminent risk of spreading nuclear conflict that such would entail.
But even on the less dramatic levels Rubio is a little menacing. He is a Hayek/Mises, supply-side, absolutely free-market economic Darwinist with Ayn Rand sensibilities relative to those who perhaps don't have either the internal or external resources that the more fortunate among us have at our disposal. He is part of the crowd that espouses the notion that if you aren't rich, it's your fault because in this country, everyone can be. But like the rest of his ilk, Rubio doesn't seem at all concerned that a person of limited intellectual capacity...and I don't mean impairment...can only expect to enjoy a certain standard of living no matter what he does. Such a person working at a fast-food restaurant making $9 an hour will always struggle no matter how many hours, and how hard he works. But his efforts are just as admirable as those of anyone to whom life comes easy because of inherited wealth or intellect. So when someone like Rubio opposes a $15 minimum wage because it might diminish the number of low paying jobs, he ignores the fact that those minimum wage jobs are insufficient to raise hard working people, sometimes working more than one of those jobs at a time, out of poverty. And then there is Rubio's tendency toward eristry to contend with. When Jeb Bush confronted Rubio with his virtual abandonment of his senatorial duties in favor of campaigning so as to fulfill his own personal political ambitions, Rubio's response was an ad hominem attack on Bush to the effect that someone else had suggested to Bush that he could gain political ground by doing so, at which juncture Bush demonstrated that in a battle of wits he is an unarmed man. Bush was incapable of reflecting Rubio's deflective, unresponsive attack on him back to Rubio by simply saying something like, the source of the question isn't important, the question is. He might have added a couple of rhetorical flourishes like, the people of your state elected you to serve them, but you are out here serving yourself and your personal ambition after pleading to them for their trust and support. He might have said, if you're not going to do the job, at least send the paychecks back...or he might just have repeated the question until Rubio answered. But Rubio was well rehearsed, and he knows his adversaries well, anticipating that Bush would stand there like a deer in the headlights instead of rearing like a rampant grizzly bear. There is no doubt that Rubio is smart, and that is what makes him dangerous. Add to that the fortitude to admit his peccadilloes, such as his misuse of a Republican Party credit card and his loss of a house to foreclosure during the financial crisis, doing so with sufficient charismatic dismissiveness that his short-comings are just brushed aside and you have a politician who can basically get away with anything.
With a year to go before the election, and nine months, more or less, until the Democratic and Republican conventions, Rubio seems to me to be the bet to make in the Republican field. While Carson may have the intellectual substance to match Rubio in public confrontations during late debates to come, he lacks Rubio's subtle ability to seem above the fray while knocking the oppositions teeth out. It seems likely to me that those two will be the last men standing, and while Carson scares me not just for his politics but for his naivety as well, and in the end his lack of preparedness for high office, Rubio at least has politics in his background up to the U.S. Senate level. He can claim the same level of experience as our present president, and do so while evincing the kind of force of personality that we can only wish now that President Obama had had for the past seven years. We are probably safe in that Hillary Clinton has that same combination of qualities that Rubio demonstrates, but she has at least two advantages. First she is a woman and most American voters...most voters are women...will see that as a qualification, and I am not sure I disagree with them. Second, she is Bill Clinton's wife, and thus, he will be out there campaigning for her, which is an asset of such magnitude that it too cannot be ignored. I'm confident that we won't see a President Rubio on inauguration day 2017, though in 2025 I'm not so sure. Me, I'm voting for Sanders in the Connecticut primary, but we all know how that's going to go.
Your friend,
Mike
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