BooksReviewThe Florida senator was the future once. Now, he struggles to muster the shamelessness or swagger of a Hawley or a Cotton
Marco Rubio should have picked a better title. With his new book, the three-term senator echoes a 1991 double-platinum album by none other than Mötley Crüe: Decade of Decadence. The vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee gives no credit to the bad boys of rock.
Rubio is no Tommy Lee. As a presidential candidate, in 2016, the Florida senator preened … with an invisible kick-me sign pinned to his back.
Donald Trump gleefully mocked the senator, his finances and personal tics. Rubio’s relationship with credit cards, Trump called a “disaster”. He also laced into his rival for sweating and gulping down water when rebutting Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2013.
“I need water. Help me. I need water,” Trump sneered.
It didn’t matter if Lil’ Marco had larger hands than him.
In New Hampshire, Chris Christie fatally blistered Rubio for a robotic debate performance. “Memorized 25-second speech” – the words will forever haunt him. In that moment, Rubio’s grand ambitions went up in smoke.
Also in 2015, McKay Coppins of the Atlantic caught Rubio pinching himself over his own good fortune, exclaiming to a friend: “It’s amazing … I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.”
So much for the yucks to be derived from Rubio’s title. As a text, Decades of Decadence delivers little. It lacks even the (skewed) intellectual curiosity of recent books by Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, hard-right senators of a generation just after Rubio. Instead, Rubio’s broadside reads like a laundry list of Republican orthodoxies delivered by a legislator scared Trump will upend his career still further. Less than two years ago, remember, the prospect of a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump had Rubio terrified.
“I like Ivanka, and we worked very well together on issues, and she’s a US …” Rubio babbled. In the end, she punted. He was spared.
But Rubio won’t (or can’t) leave well enough alone. In his new book, he compares himself to Donald Trump.
“Watching the Trump campaign in action, I was reminded of my own first campaign for the US Senate in 2010,” he reminisces. “I did have an outsider spirit that allowed me to connect with voters who felt that the government wasn’t working for them.”
Not in 2016, he didn’t. In his own state, Rubio lost the presidential primary to Trump by nearly 20 points.
Elsewhere, Rubio compares himself to Roger Goodell.
“I think of my role as a policymaker as very similar to the role of the commissioner of the National Football League,” he writes.
OK. For what it’s worth, Rubio’s wife was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. His time as a college football player is a source of personal nostalgia.
Dutifully, Rubio bashes the Bushes. He attacks the late George HW Bush and James Baker, his secretary of state, for being soft on China. He castigates Bush, who was ambassador to the United Nations and liaison to China, for referring to a Chinese leader as an “old friend”. He zings Baker as a “career public servant”.
Bush served in the second world war. Baker was Bush’s “Velvet Hammer”. On their watch, the Berlin Wall fell and Kuwait was liberated. Rubio never wore a uniform and has spent most of his adult existence on the taxpayers’ dime. He is a career politician.
Predictably, Rubio omits any mention of Trump prostrating himself before Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The normally loquacious senator also stayed mum over Trump congratulating Kim on his country’s election to the board of the World Health Organization.
On the page, Rubio also takes aim at the over-extension of the US military, financialism and woke corporations. He evidently suffers from amnesia. In a March 2015 interview with Fox News, Rubio rejected the contention the Iraq war was a mistake.
“I don’t believe it was,” he said, adding: “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.”
Weeks later, he reversed his position.
In the same spirit of expediency, Rubio now voices disgust for Wall Street and financialism, upbraids Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase for supporting Black Lives Matter, and zings Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Capital for boosting investment in China.
In 2016, such forces drove Rubio’s presidential campaign. Politico blared: “Koch donors give Rubio early nod.” Other major donors included Paul Singer of Elliott Management and Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund mogul and Harvard donor.
“I’m really excited to be supporting Marco Rubio,” Griffin said. “He will be the next president.”
Not quite. Seven years on, Griffin’s Citadel Securities is increasing its exposure in China.
To Rubio, apparently, the role of business is to cough up campaign dollars – then shut up.
“The best way to ensure our political system is less reliant on money is not to pass laws which infringe on fundamental rights, but rather to elect leaders who value policy and principles over politics and special interests,” the senator intones.
In the race for the Republican nomination, he has not yet endorsed. That has not stopped him bemoaning Trump’s fate at the hands of the law. Last week, moments after news of the former president’s latest indictment, over his retention of classified records, Rubio delivered the following tweet:
“There is no limit to what these people will do to protect their power and destroy those who threaten it, even if it means ripping our country apart and shredding public faith in the institutions that hold our republic together.”
His disdain for Joe Biden is unvarnished. Trump? Less so – in public, at least.
Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity is published in the US by HarperCollins
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