The big question
facing Marco Rubio is not what he does next but how he chooses to do it, based
on the lessons he draws from his defeat.
Rubio, whose U.S.
Senate term ends in January and whose bid for the White House splintered on the
shoals of his home state Tuesday night, could run for Florida governor in 2018.
He could leave politics for a time, go into business and make some money, or
start a nonprofit and then run for president again in 2020. But it is hard for
many to see him fading altogether from the political scene.
“It is not God’s
plan that I be president in 2016, or maybe ever,” Rubio said in his concession
speech here Tuesday night. His use of the word “maybe” was a clear indication
that, already, 2020 is on his mind.
Assuming his time
in public life is not at an end, the dilemma facing the 44-year-old,
still-baby-faced politician is who he chooses to become after his bruising
experience in the time of Trump.
Does he retain
the hopeful, optimistic tone and message that facilitated his rise to national
office in 2010? Or does he try to somehow chase the worship of celebrity and
the rage in the electorate that has been exposed, and encouraged, by Republican
frontrunner Donald Trump?
“I do worry that
he learns the wrong lessons from this cycle, and thinks he lost because he
wasn’t angry or insane enough,” said Steve Schale, a top Democratic operative
in Florida who has admired Rubio’s political skills as a member of the
opposition party.
“If he learns the
wrong lessons, he’ll go off and do crazy, insane things for the next few years,
and that won’t end well,” Schale said.
Schale’s advice
could be self-serving — he’s close to one Democrat who may run for governor
herself in 2018, Rep. Gwen Graham — but his recommendation for Rubio would be
to not run in 2018, and to go into business instead.
“Go keep your
head down and do something outside of politics,” Schale said. “In the modern
world, you don’t need a political platform to succeed in politics. He’s a young
and talented guy, and success in the real world would allow him to mount a
comeback at almost any time.”
There is some
logic to that argument. Certainly in this election, any whiff of time spent in
elected office has been politically poisonous. Trump had nearly universal name
ID with the electorate due to his years in reality TV and before that, from his
life as a New York businessman who dabbled in the world of sports
entertainment.
Trump has made a
career of courting controversy. Rubio, if he wanted, could dive headfirst into
the world of celebrity. That is the route to take if the lesson of 2016 is that
the best route to political success is to copy the Trump model — that all publicity
is good publicity, shame is passé, and thinking through how you might govern
before you rouse passions is for losers.
Of course, it’s
possible Rubio already learned his lesson about attempting this, having tried
to beat Trump at his own insult game in the last month, only to overstep and
have it backfire.
Another
interpretation of Rubio’s humiliation is that voters just decided he needed to
slow down and grow up a little, or maybe more than a little. He’s been in a
hurry his entire adult life, and his impatience to get to the next level of
political power has led Rubio to leave friends and allies in the dust. Many of
the pre-defeat obituaries on Rubio’s career during the last week suggested that
he had forgotten where he came from.
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