Miami
Florida senator Marco Rubio announced his campaign for the presidency Monday in a stirring speech at Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, just miles away from his childhood home.
The well-choreographed announcement showcased Rubio’s gifts as an orator and gave his audience glimpses of the personal story he will use to sell his candidacy over the next year, perhaps longer. It’s a powerful story and Rubio tells it well. The son of Cuban exiles who worked long hours—his father was a bartender and his mother a maid—to provide for their children, Rubio speaks to middle class voters as one of their own.
Rubio’s address wrapped a stark warning about the erosion of American greatness inside a broadly optimistic speech about the urgent necessity of preserving it. He made clear his determination to try to turn his relative youth into an advantage, contrasting the fresh leadership he is offering with the stale and tired leadership of recent years. The election, he said, is a “generational choice about what kind of country we will be.”
Rubio dismissed likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as a product of a bygone era. “Just yesterday, a leader from yesterday began a campaign for president by promising to take us back to yesterday,” he said to rising applause. “But yesterday is over and we are never going back.” The election will be about the future, Rubio said, and realizing the promise of American renewal won’t happen “by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past.”
Rubio has a history with the Clintons. In the final days of the 2010 Senate race, Bill Clinton asked Democrat Rep. Kendrick Meek to consider dropping out of the race so that Charlie Crist might win. Crist, the Florida governor who ran as an independent after realizing that he couldn’t beat Rubio in the GOP primary, was polling ahead of Meek at the time and Democrats believed Crist could beat Rubio if the contest was a head-to-head competition. But Meek declined, and Rubio won. If Rubio wins the GOP primary, he will likely face Hillary Clinton in a general election.
Rubio enters the race as the seventh choice among likely Republican candidates, according to the Real Clear Politics average, with the support of less than 8 percent of GOP primary voters. He will not remain there. Voters are familiar with Rubio from watching YouTube videos of his Senate floor speeches and his occasional appearances on Fox News and the Sunday talk shows. But they don’t know Rubio.
The announcement signals the start of an intensive effort by Rubio to make himself known to voters across the country and, of course, in the states holding the first four presidential contests of 2016: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
In appearances in those crucial states, Rubio will expand on the themes he articulated in his speech Monday.
In a passage that will likely be seen as a gentle shot at Rubio’s friend and now rival, Jeb Bush, the Florida senator noted that opportunity in America isn’t reserved to those with connections or a celebrated name. “In many countries, the highest office in the land is reserved for the rich and powerful. But I live in an exceptional country where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”
Rubio was straightforward about the purpose of his candidacy and his presidency.
My father was grateful for the work he had, but that was not the life he wanted for his children. He wanted all the dreams he once had for himself to come true for us. He wanted all the doors that closed for him to be open for me.
My father stood behind a small portable bar in the back of a room for all those years, so that tonight I could stand behind this podium in the front of this room.
That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, is the essence of the American Dream.
Whether or not we remain a special country will depend on whether that journey is still possible for those trying to make it now:
The single mother who works long hours for little pay so her children don’t have to struggle the way she has…
The student who takes two buses before dawn to attend a better school halfway across town…
The workers in our hotel kitchens, the landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff that clean our offices … and the bartenders who tonight are standing in the back of a room somewhere…
If their American Dreams become impossible, we will have become just another country. But if they succeed, the 21st Century will be another American Century. This will be the message of my campaign and the purpose of my presidency.
