Rubio Plays Defense

As the interview began, the earpiece in Rubio’s right ear started replaying the bizarre exchange between Rubio and Governor Chris Christie from Saturday night.

In all, Rubio would give some version of the dispel-this-fiction line four times. The same clip had been played on a virtual loop across cable and broadcast television networks since the debate. Rubio, wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and pink tie, stood expressionless as he heard once again the moment his detractors hoped would bring his promising political career to an abrupt and premature end.

When the clip was finished, Rubio listened to CBS This Morning host Norah O’Donnell inform viewers that the “reviews were rough on Senator Rubio with the word ‘choke’ used several times.”

Good morning to you, Senator Rubio.

Rubio took two questions from O’Donnell on his debate answer and struck a defiant note. “I look forward to continuing to say it. I hope they keep replaying those lines.”

Cohost Gayle King was dubious. “Wow, all right. A lot of people are wondering about your strategy on that,” she said, “but let’s move on.”

She did not, in fact, move on.

“After the debate, people said, ‘Well, he took a big fall.’ How do you feel about your debate performance? And how were you feeling going into New Hampshire?”

Rubio patiently answered this question and then another and another and another. But his good cheer had worn out by the time the interview ended. “Did something happen over my shoulder?” he asked no one in particular, explaining that he could hear the clamor and noticed those facing him looking past him to see what had happened. He found the commotion distracting and said it had been hard to focus on the questions through all the din.

Rubio was clearly aggravated — maybe because of the noise, maybe because of the interview, maybe because this awkward debate moment had taken on a life of its own. Maybe all of it.

But directly behind him, sitting beneath a blizzard of cutout paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, supporters and potential supporters sipped coffee and ate their waffles as they waited for a moment with the candidate. He didn’t have time to dwell on his frustration.

Rubio moved from booth to booth answering questions, sometimes in great detail. As he did, a man in a black pinstriped suit with a shamrock lapel pin maneuvered past the knot of reporters and photographers to get close to Rubio. He waited for his moment, sidled up to the candidate, and then leaned in for a word.

“Hang in there,” he said. “It’s just gonna make you tougher.”

For three days, Rubio world remained suspended in this odd news-cycle purgatory: The political media were in a full froth over Rubio’s debate stumble but the candidate wasn’t acknowledging a misstep. Even as Rubio’s rivals sought to capitalize on the debate story, especially Christie and Jeb Bush, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the frenzy was a real problem or the kind of story that captivated the political class but was irrelevant to actual voters.

Rubio’s polling suggested that while the incident may have stalled the momentum he had built with his surprisingly strong third-place finish in Iowa, it hadn’t been reversed. And early Monday afternoon, the campaign received two pieces of information that seemed to suggest Rubio might survive without serious damage. As Rubio and his team boarded the campaign bus after a stop at the Puritan Backroom, a famous Manchester eatery, they learned that Rush Limbaugh was mounting an aggressive defense of Rubio. It was even better than they might have hoped; the talk radio pioneer had not only supported Rubio but chastised the other Republican candidates for failing to make the same critique of Obama. Rubio asked if there was a transcript. Todd Harris, a senior Rubio adviser, said that they had the audio, and after a moment he played it for Rubio on his laptop.

A short time later, the team learned that the new CNN/WMUR tracking poll would show Rubio in second place in New Hampshire — with 17 percent of the GOP vote. More important, the track showed no dropoff in support for Rubio in interviews conducted after the debate.

It was good news. And yet some 18 hours before voting in New Hampshire started, there was a lingering sense that it was too good to be true.

Rubio didn’t seem terribly affected by the frenzy. Aside from his momentary expression of frustration that morning, his face was fixed in a broad smile all day — both in public and away from the voters and the journalists following him. As the bus emblazoned with his name rolled toward the next stop, Rubio sat in a large black recliner chatting with his wife and top aides, his lap occasionally serving as a seat for one of his two young sons. The strong smell of chicken fingers and French fries overwhelmed the small front room of the bus as the conversation jumped from the kids and school to foreign policy and the bin Laden raid, from practical questions about the next campaign stop to news of the day.

Fox News played without sound on a television built into the wall opposite Rubio’s chair and occasionally prompted a comment from the candidate. He noticed a new poll that flashed on the screen showing him beating Hillary Clinton head-to-head in New Hampshire and moments later laughed and shook his head at a chyron displayed on the lower third of the screen — “Trump: Jeb Bush a ‘Loser.’ ” Fox reported that Rubio was leading the presidential field in endorsements from members of Congress. Rubio asked: “Does that include Deb Fischer?” The senator from Nebraska had endorsed Rubio that morning.

The bus stopped next at the Barley House, an inviting tavern in Concord, where Rubio would record a “Pints and Politics” interview with Chris Ryan, a local radio host. A chalkboard sign near the front door announced the specials of the day, including a Marco Rubio burger, which brought together the ingredients of a good Cuban sandwich (ham, roast pork, pickles, and cheese) with a burger. Rubio strode past the sign, waded through a thick throng of voters and cameramen packed into the small front room of the bar, and climbed down some stairs leading to the small bar where he’d sit for his interview.

Ryan asked questions on a wide range of topics — Libya, Syria, the federal budget, entitlements, infrastructure spending — and Rubio gave thoughtful, detailed responses, a fact that seemed to surprise the host.

“It’s interesting, we’ve sat here for 15 minutes, we’ve done a round-robin of questions — you had no idea what’s coming — and the narrative about you in the media and in the debate is 25-second sound bite stump speeches and so forth. Do you feel that the media and some candidates have taken liberties with your bio?”

Rubio laughed and downplayed any sense that he’d been slighted. “I mean, look, people are running for president and they’re looking for any competitive advantage. And if they don’t have one, they’ll make it up.”

Then he turned serious for his “jerk store” moment. “If you’re Chris Christie, and you supported gun control, gave a personal contribution to Planned Parenthood, supported Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court, and are a big strong proponent of Common Core, you can’t run on your record.”

Ryan closed by asking Rubio what he’d learned running for president. Perhaps not surprisingly, Rubio passed on the invitation to put himself on the couch, and spoke instead about all the things he’d learned by interacting with voters.

Back on the bus, Rubio was a bit more contemplative. Apropos of nothing, he volunteered that he hoped his sons would play competitive football as they grow up. Football, he said, teaches important life lessons and he pointed to his freshman year at Tarkio College in Missouri as an example. His team was playing a much bigger school, Missouri Valley College, and Rubio was assigned to cover Brian Clayton, an all-conference running back who was split out wide. “I’m a freshman and this dude beats me — like, embarrasses me — for like an 80-yard bomb for a touchdown. And even though he beat me, my attitude was, ‘Well, he’s their best player.’ ”

He was. Clayton was named to NAIA’s All-American team that year and the touchdown he scored on Rubio was one of the 31 he tallied that year — a total that led the nation.

“At that moment, my attitude was, even though I gave up a touchdown, I thought I was like a world-beater, I didn’t care, I hope he runs that play again. You have to have such a short memory. If you’re a corner and you get beat on an 80-yard bomb and you go into the tank, you’re going to get eaten up all day long. You literally have to believe that even if you gave up that touchdown, well, that was a fluke. I hope they run it again.”

According to Rubio, they did. “They tried the same route again, like in the third quarter, and I picked it off in the end zone. I didn’t run it back — he was a big guy, like 6′3″ — but I picked it off.” It wasn’t enough, however, as Missouri Valley defeated Tarkio College 54-7.

Rubio never directly mentioned the debate, though everyone there knew why he was sharing these life lessons. His only reference to it came in passing and in anticipation of an argument no one had made. “I’m not saying that I just gave up an 80-yard bomb. I don’t agree with that assessment. But when you play corner you have to have the shortest memory possible.”

Quarterback, too, he said. “Peyton Manning got booed off the field this year in Denver. They literally booed him off the field. Week seven or whatever.” It was week six, but close enough. “So I just think that’s one of those things that you can learn in football .  .  . and I think it has application to politics.”

And then, as abruptly as his life lesson began, it ended. “Leopard injures four people after entering private school in India,” he read off the television screen. “Only four people? Explain that to the parents,” he said, lowering his voice as he mimicked a serious-sounding school official. “Ah, we got a leopard in the school today. We’ve had a leopard incident today in school.”

In a presidential election with dozens of bizarre and confounding moments, most of them involving Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, one of the strangest was the moment surrounding Rubio’s debate performance.

The conventional wisdom, shaped these days at the speed of social media, moved from accurate to overstated, and then from exaggerated to absurd. First: Rubio sounded scripted and robotic in his exchange with Christie (accurate). Then: Rubio turned in a disastrous debate performance (overstated). And then: The debate revealed that Rubio is an overly programmed and robotic candidate (exaggerated). And finally: Rubio is a lightweight incapable of anything other than scripted answers designed to cover his lack of substance (absurd).

James Poulos, an insightful right-leaning columnist with the Week, wrote that Rubio “blew it” and “came off as an empty vessel that someone had poured some rather uninspiring anti-Obama talking points into.”

Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post, often a reliable indicator of center-left conventional wisdom, went further. “The truth,” Robinson wrote, is that “once you get past the façade, there appears to be no there there.” The debate was thus “revealing,” because it confirmed “the narrative of a talented and ambitious young man in far too much of a hurry, programmed to say what he thinks voters want to hear.”

But for anyone still listening after the painful exchange with Christie — a group that doesn’t include many journalists — Rubio answered those concerns later in the same debate. Co-moderator Martha Raddatz, a national security correspondent with ABC News, pushed Rubio hard — with three consecutive questions — on ISIS. She first asked him to clarify what he meant by the “overwhelming force” needed to defeat ISIS, and Rubio detailed his plan to use Sunni allies — he specified five countries — to work alongside U.S. special operators, backed up by increased U.S. airpower in strikes not limited to Iraq and Syria but in the dozen other countries where ISIS is operating.

She followed up by asking why he wouldn’t commit more ground forces if ISIS is such a grave threat to the United States and its allies. Rubio replied:

When she asked him how he’d bring Sunnis aboard, Rubio described, again in great detail, the current reservations our Sunni allies have, including the request, conveyed during a visit to Washington three weeks earlier by Jordan’s King Abdullah, for permission to target caravans, something the coalition’s current rules of engagement do not allow. It was easily the best answer—or set of answers—in the entire debate.

Rubio’s policy fluency shouldn’t surprise anyone who has spent just a few minutes listening to him. He focused on domestic policy during his time in the Florida legislature, but with seats on the foreign relations and intelligence committees, Rubio has developed a special interest in national security and foreign policy since his arrival in Washington. In April 2012, a little more than a year into his term, Rubio gave a major foreign policy address at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank in Washington. In an interview in his office the day before that speech, we spent 45 minutes previewing its contents and discussing his approach to the world. He moved fluently from the impact of sanctions in Iran to continued Taliban dominance in Afghanistan, from Vladimir Putin’s designs for Russian expansion and the unsustainability of China’s growth, all in the context of the changing geopolitical landscape and America’s role in shaping it.

The speech itself won positive reviews from journalists and thinkers across the political spectrum. Ryan Lizza described it in the New Yorker as a “crisp and thoughtful tour of the world.” But what was particularly impressive was the off-the-record lunch discussion afterwards. For nearly an hour, Rubio, 16 months into his Senate term, took questions from a wide range of scholars and think tankers on a number of topics. The questioning was often intense — highly specific inquiries from subject-matter experts on the topics that they knew best. Rubio gave thoughtful, detailed answers that demonstrated his understanding of the subject matter and his ability to discuss these issues well beyond his prepared remarks. The consensus afterwards: The guy really knows his stuff.

Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at Brookings, says that while he doesn’t agree with everything Rubio says on the campaign trail, particularly his claim that Obama has “eviscerated” the U.S. military, in his meetings with Rubio, including that lunch, he “found him very engaging and a very good listener and very smart.”

After “Pints and Politics” at the Barley House, the bus headed through increasingly heavy snow to the Village Trestle in Goffstown, just outside of Manchester. Rubio sloshed to the door and entered a room packed with supporters and journalists. He walked to a makeshift stage in front of a black curtain and began speaking.

The candidate started with an impromptu joke about his children remaining on the bus to finish a competitive game of Minecraft and then launched into his speech. Electing Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, he warned, would mean a continuation of the kinds of policies the country had gotten from Barack Obama.

When a woman from the audience shouted “more of the same,” Rubio challenged her claim. “Not just more of the same, worse. Obamacare becomes permanent. Dodd-Frank becomes permanent. All these unconstitutional executive orders become permanent. In essence, this effort by Barack Obama to redefine this country, to change the role our government plays, to undermine the Constitution, to weaken us in the world— this deliberate effort to change the country continues.”

Rubio touted his electability, citing the poll he’d seen on Fox less than an hour earlier. “Another poll came out today. It shows that if I’m our nominee, I don’t just beat Hillary, I beat Hillary in New Hampshire, which we need to win in November.”

He moved on to a riff built on the final question he had received during his interview at the previous stop. “What have you learned on the campaign trail?” He answered his own question with a soliloquy on the difference between the American people and their government. “We talk about all the things that are going on in America — and we have problems,” he said. “But we should not confuse our government and our people. Our country is not a government, our country is our people.”

Rubio told a story of a chance encounter two days earlier as he was leaving church. He and his wife were invited to sit in on a faith-based rehabilitation group that meets in the parish. “After people go through detox and recovery, this program helps them go on about their lives,” he said. “It doesn’t just restore them physically, it restores them spiritually. It brings them closer to the Lord. They didn’t wait around and ask for permission from the government to start a program. They’re not sitting around waiting for a government grant to come to continue that program.”

The “robotic” and “scripted” candidate gave an extemporaneous speech that included a poll he’d just seen on television and a question he’d been asked at a previous stop. It ended with a powerful Toquevillian example of the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

It wasn’t enough. The debate blunder — and the three days of blanket coverage of it — hurt Rubio in New Hampshire. He’d come out of Iowa a strong third and appeared to have momentum. But he finished fifth in New Hampshire, with 11 percent of the vote. Two of the candidates who finished in front of him, Jeb Bush and John Kasich, had effectively bet their candidacies on New Hampshire. Bush also pulled 11 percent but beat Rubio by about 1,300 votes, spending almost double the number of days in the state (52-28) and more than double the money ($36 million to $15 million). Kasich spent 70 days in the state, conducted more than 100 town halls, and spent $12.1 million. (Judging by return on investment the winners were Trump, who won 35 percent of the vote spending just $3.7 million and 27 days in the state, and Cruz, who spent less than $1 million and also spent 27 days in New Hampshire.)

The exit polls made clear that the debate hurt Rubio: 89 percent of voters told pollsters that “recent debates” were a factor in their decision (8 percent said they were not). In Iowa, late-deciders broke more strongly for Rubio than for any other candidate; in New Hampshire, he was the fourth choice of late-deciders (behind Trump, Kasich, and Cruz).

Despite all of this, Rubio was still seen as highly electable. Among voters who cited “can win in November” as the most important candidate quality, Trump took 32 percent. Rubio followed closely with 30 percent, nearly double the total of the other non-Trump candidates. (Kasich had 16, Bush 9, and Cruz 6.)

After polls closed in New Hampshire, Rubio told his supporters that he accepted blame for the debate moment and promised that it wouldn’t happen again. The campaign moved to make Rubio, already one of the more accessible Republican candidates, even more open to the media. The day after the New Hampshire primary, Rubio held a 45-minute press gaggle aboard his plane to South Carolina, and the day after that he had breakfast with reporters covering his campaign. The campaign plans to host regular sessions with the candidate aboard the campaign bus over the next several weeks — reprising John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” media strategy in 2000 and 2008. Their view: Rubio is good, let’s make sure everyone understands it.

It’s still early — with Iowa and New Hampshire behind us, just 53 of 2,472 delegates have been assigned. The Rubio campaign is prepared for a long slog, perhaps all the way to the convention in Cleveland this summer.

That’s probably wise.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.