Chris Christie dealt Marco Rubio a blow on Saturday. When Christie said Rubio isn't ready to be president because he relies too heavily on memorized stump speeches, Rubio responded by delivering a stump speech, verbatim, several times. The exchange went viral. Rubio's enemies in the GOP, among the Democrats, and in the media piled on. His future is uncertain.
I went back and looked at President Obama's answer to the readiness question. Hillary Clinton attacked Obama's youth and thin résumé throughout their primary fight, mostly famously in the "3 a.m. phone call" ad. But Obama not only defeated Clinton, he also beat John McCain, who made similar arguments against him. How?
During a debate on October 30, 2007, the following exchange took place between then-senator Obama and then-NBC anchor Brian Williams:
WILLIAMS: What specifically is your relevant experience for being president?
OBAMA: The experience I have in politics is primarily legislative, but here's the experience that I think the next president needs. I think the next president has to be able to get people to work together to get things done even when they disagree, and I've done that. You know, when I was in Illinois we brought police officers and civil rights advocates together to reform a death penalty system that had sent 13 innocent men to death row, and we ended up passing it unanimously, even though originally people had said it couldn't be done.
Dennis earlier was talking about the need to work on nonproliferation issues. I've worked with Dick Lugar, Republican spokesperson for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to focus on the next generation of nonproliferation efforts. Now that I think is critical experience.
I also think it is critical for the next president to be experienced to stand up to special interests. I'm glad Hillary's talking about it, but I'm the only person on this stage who has worked actively just last year passing -- along with Russ Feingold -- some of the toughest ethics reforms since Watergate -- making sure that lobbyists could not provide gifts and meals to congressman, making sure the bundling of monies by lobbyists was disclosed.
And finally, I think we've got to have a president who has the experience of standing up even when it's not easy, which is what I did in 2002 when I stood up against this war in Iraq 10 days before the authorization. It is -- that is the kind of judgment that I'm displaying during this campaign when I go to Detroit and I say to the automakers that they need to raise fuel efficiency standards; not in front of some environmental group.
That kind of consistency and principled leadership, I think, is what is going to move us in the next direction. That's what I'll provide as president.
The legislative items—death sentencing reform, nonproliferation, lobbyist disclosure—are small ball. But each of them reinforces a broad theme of Obama's candidacy: bipartisanship (funny, I know), and public purpose over special interests.
Most important, though, is the last item: opposition to the war in Iraq. As Michael Crowley reported in 2008, Obama was worried about the political consequences of coming out against the invasion of Iraq when he did, "10 days before the authorization." If the war had been an unqualified success, it would have hurt him. But the war wasn't an unqualified success, and by the time Obama ran for president it was seen by a majority of the Democrats and the public to have been a failure. Iraq was the fundamental political question of the first decade of this century. Taking the stand he did when he did allowed Barack Obama to show that experience isn't everything. Judgment matters more.
Now go back to Rubio's exchange with Christie. The examples of legislation he has worked on didn't reinforce the themes of his candidacy. On the contrary: They reinforced the arguments of his opponents. When Rubio cited his work on Hezbollah sanctions, for example, Christie sarcastically interjected that Rubio didn't even show up to vote for the bill. He therefore reminded voters of the criticism of Rubio as rarely present in the Senate. As for repeating the script after you've been attacked as scripted, well, it's obvious how that helps your opponent.
But Rubio has another problem, too. He doesn't have an Iraq. He doesn't have a contentious issue on which he and a large portion of his party have diverged. Indeed, on what some say is the defining issue of the second decade of this century—immigration—Rubio's position is muddled and seriously complicated by his work on the infamous Gang of Eight bill of 2013. By supporting that bill, Rubio placed himself not on the side of the grassroots, as Obama did in opposing Iraq, but on the side of his party's donors and opinion elites. Today, Rubio is neither Jeb Bush nor Donald Trump. He says he's for an enforcement-first approach to immigration. But based on my Twitter feed, he's still got a lot of convincing to do.
One possibility for Rubio would be to talk up his support for, and his role in developing, a twenty-first century conservative agenda that includes a family-friendly tax plan and higher education reform and Wage Enhancement Credits. Such a move would both connect to his large campaign theme of "a new American century," and to his case that older Republican leaders lack the judgment to win and thrive in a Millennial world. He hasn't done that yet, though. Marco Rubio's strategy is to be the optimistic, unifying candidate who is most likely to win in November. He's sticking to the script.