At this moment, Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio — presidential contenders in the context of politics and promising leaders in the context of civics — are in a bit of a public spat about America’s new Cuba policy. Paul, well known for his libertarian streak, cited free trade in providing some support to President Obama’s position of ending the Cuban embargo. Rubio, a Cuban-American who possesses vital perspective on the issue, hammered the president, and subsequently dinged Paul for sharing Obama’s opinion. “Like many people who have been opining, he has no idea what he’s talking about,” Rubio said of Paul Thursday night.
Such a name-check and charge no doubt inspired Paul’s response Friday, which included some audacious imagery: “Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat,” he tweeted. Besides the headline-grabbing nature of this message, he also raised three substantive points to Rubio: the support that ending the embargo enjoys among young Cuban-Americans, the U.S.’s approach to trade with nations like China and Vietnam, and Rubio’s own stance that it’s not the embargo harming the Cuban people, but the Cuban government itself. “[I]f the embargo doesn’t hurt Cuba, why do you want to keep it?” he asked.
This is a good question. Rubio said Thursday that Cuba and Venezuela both have “socialist, radical” governments, and both of their peoples suffer because of it — yet Cuba is embargoed, and Venezuela is not. How, then, can the anti-embargo crowd have a valid argument?
The response is that it’s not a matter of harm, but a matter of outcomes. Has America’s consistent policy against Cuba appreciably improved the odds that the isolated nation will enjoy human dignity, economic freedom, and representative government in the future? If the answer is no — and judging by the precedent of 50-plus years, it is — then the sensible response is to change course, either by ratcheting up sanctions against Cuba in way that hasn’t been tried before, or to relax the existing approach. It is here that there can be a debate. As Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, “After 50 years of trying one thing, and seeing that thing fail, and fail again, it was about time that the United States try something else.”
To Paul, that is “open trade,” as he put it Thursday. His disagreement with Rubio is good and weighty. But it is vital that it becomes productive.
This budding rhetorical fight between the two senators has two angles to it. One is that Paul chose his words poorly and is picking the wrong battle, and that the battle could be political in and of itself, instigated by Rubio’s opening jab. The other is that economics are a powerful tool — especially for the world’s most powerful economy — with which to conduct foreign policy and achieve what it is that we all want to see: a free and prosperous future for the Cuban people.
I am sanctimonious about my wariness of politics. Too often they’re an unproductive game of intrigue that allows a voracious media to elevate trifling matters to national stories, gives lawmakers a forum to treat governing as a campaign instead of governing, encourages discord, inspires overreaction, and makes the American voter faithless in the institutions he funds with his tax dollars.
The sort of contrast that exists between Paul and Rubio could be restorative. So what takes precedence in their evaluation of it? In ours? That it’s the latest storyline of an election whose first primary is a year away? Or that it’s an opportunity to either validate U.S. policy — or improve it?
