SALON

Friday, Oct 21, 2011 3:48 PM UTC

The real problem for Marco Rubio

He's probably not the serial embellisher a new story makes him out to be, but it's still a sign of a deeper issue

By

Topics: War Room, Marco Rubio,

The real problem for Marco RubioSen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) (Credit: Yuri Gripas / Reuters)

Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Tea Party hero who was elected to the Senate from Florida last year, is one of the first people anyone mentions when the subject of the No. 2 slot on next year’s GOP ticket comes up. Even Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the No. 1 slot, invoked Rubio’s name (along with two others) when he was asked about potential running mates a few months ago.

At first glance, then, a Washington Post story that charges Rubio with embellishing facts about his family’s flight to America would seem to be a potentially devastating blow to his national prospects. There’s good news for Rubio, though: There really isn’t too much to the story. Basically, the Post found that Rubio’s parents left Cuba for the United States in 1956, three years before the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. This is at odds with the official biography on Rubio’s Senate website, which claims that he was “born to Cuban-born parents who came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” This claim is demonstrably untrue and presumably the Rubio website will be updated.

But beyond that, all the Post really has are a few instances of Rubio talking about himself as “the son of exiles” and getting the precise date of his parents’ departure from Cuba wrong. He’s also failed to correct a few interviewers who claimed his parents left after Castro took power. There’s context here that (mostly) exonerates Rubio, though. For one thing, in a video the Post cites in which Rubio calls himself the “son of exiles,” he makes clear that he’s referring to the Miami community in which he was raised, which was filled with authentic Castro exiles. Plus, Rubio suggests his parents should be thought of as exiles anyway, since they had wanted to return to Cuba after spending a few years in America but were scared away permanently by Castro’s rise. (Rubio even says his mother returned briefly in 1961 with the idea that her husband would soon join her.) This seems like a reasonable claim, as the Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo explains:

Regardless of when his parents left Cuba, they were exiles because they stayed in the US, specifically Miami, in a community where they soon felt they couldn’t go back to their homeland. Though the story said his parents left for economic reasons, it’s silent about the fact that the dictator before Castro, Batista, was so brutal that it made Castro look like a good alternative at first

That leaves the instances in which Rubio offered the wrong year for his parents’ move, but here it seems like he was simply guessing — “my parents and grandparents came here from Cuba in ’58, ’59.” As Caputo notes, this suggests Rubio is guilty of something other than embellishment:

Rubio’s inability to remember these specific dates isn’t much of a surprise. Rubio is sometimes sloppy. When he was in the Florida House, he failed to disclose a loan at one point and fill out his financial disclosures properly. He rung up a host of personal and questionable expenses on a Republican Party of Florida credit card and couldn’t show how they furthered party business.

Indeed, the Washington Post story notes that “details have changed in his accounts” of his grandmother’s death — whether it happened when his father was 6 or 9. That’s not embellishment. That’s evidence of sloppiness.

That sounds more like it. And sloppiness could be a real concern when it comes time for the GOP presidential nominee to pick a running mate. In addition to the GOP credit card issue, Rubio’s own finances were the source of considerable embarrassment during his Senate campaign last year, leading one Republican consultant to say: “There seems to be a pattern of behavior in which he’s not good at controlling his own money or the money of others.” This is the sort of stuff that could raise serious red flags during the V.P. vetting process. And you’ve got to imagine that after the Palin experience of 2008, the next GOP nominee will be a little more careful.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 24 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

War Room is our political news and commentary blog, with coverage and commentary throughout the day.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations