| When the first round of Donald Trump’s cabinet selections was announced last month, I was in Germany, participating in a round-table conversation on the future of American foreign policy. As the only American involved, I received many befuddled questions from the German interlocutors. Most of the names prompted some degree of confusion or consternation except for one: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for secretary of state. Compared with someone accused of statutory rape (who has since withdrawn), someone accused of sexual assault and a suspected Russian sympathizer, Mr. Rubio looks conventional. He is a three-term senator who has long been keenly interested in foreign affairs. Multiple Democratic senators have already praised his selection, to the consternation of both the anti-interventionist left and the MAGA right. The question to ask, however, is which Marco Rubio will show up at Foggy Bottom if he gets the job next year. Will he be a hawkish, open-markets, democracy-promoting optimist or a more inward-looking, antiglobalist pessimist? Either scenario is plausible because Mr. Rubio’s worldview has, to use the argot of the Beltway, evolved over the years. As populist nationalism consumed the Republican Party, Mr. Rubio shifted to accommodate Mr. Trump’s worldview. His hawkishness has mostly persisted while his embrace of globalization curdled. Even a cursory look at Mr. Rubio’s political evolution over the years suggests that his ultimate success will not hinge on his deep and genuine knowledge of world politics but rather his ability to position himself at the dead center of the G.O.P.’s fractured ideological spectrum. As a metaphor for the transformation of the Republican Party in the 21st century, one could do worse than starting with Mr. Rubio’s books. Like many politicians on the rise, Mr. Rubio wrote one, titled “An American Son,” in 2012, which leaned heavily on his sunny view of the American dream: “I am the child of immigrants,” he wrote, “an American with a history that began somewhere else and with a special place in his heart for the land of lost dreams his parents had left, so their children wouldn’t lose theirs.” Mr. Rubio’s rags-to-riches political narrative fit with his surprising rise to the U.S. Senate. During his time in the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio was known as a conservative who was willing to cross the partisan aisle. In 2004 he co-sponsored a bill in the Florida Legislature to provide in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants who met academic benchmarks. Riding the Tea Party wave of 2010, he won his Senate seat despite being the underdog to Charlie Crist, who was then the governor. Mr. Rubio’s relative youth and Cuban heritage marked him as a Republican on the rise. Not many years later, Mr. Rubio was gearing up to run for president — and no longer a Washington outsider. He seemed to understand that just because he was elected as an insurgent “doesn’t mean he has to govern as one,” as Sam Tanenhaus wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 2014. His insider status was further reflected in his 2015 campaign book, “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone.” Touting “reformist” ideas promoted by a group of Republicans — including what effectively amounted to a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants — Mr. Rubio’s book received praise from some unlikely quarters, including The New Republic. In the acknowledgments, he thanked the legendary Washington lawyer Bob Barnett, signaling that he was safely ensconced in the corridors of Beltway power. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.fowl play gold
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