We’ve arrived at the point in the campaign where it’s time begin worrying about Sen. Marco Rubio’s hawkish tendencies (this is a good sign for him, inasmuch as it signals people are at least starting to imagine him as commander-in-chief).
Over at TAC, Jim Antle suggests that — for all Rubio’s talk about generational change and the future — his foreign policy would be a bridge to the George W. Bush past. Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein argues the foreign policy debate between Rubio and Ted Cruz is more important than the one between Rubio and Rand Paul.
At a time when President Barack Obama’s lack of leadership around the world has manifested serious negative consequences (from Putin to ISIS) — and when Obama’s nuclear framework with Iran feels like negotiating from a position of weakness — Rubio’s soaring rhetoric about restoring America’s influence abroad certainly resonates.
But while I agree America must be a force for good around the globe, it’s also fair to question whether or not Rubio has really, deeply, learned the lessons of the George W. Bush foreign policy mistakes.
And if he hasn’t — despite all his many other attributes — this is something we ought to know.
Because of the need to contrast with President Obama’s positions, we are too often presented with a simplistic binary choice between what amounts to “leading from behind” and “nation building” — between isolationism and adventurism. Although Rubio is always quick to throw in caveats like (paraphrasing here), “…this doesn’t mean we have to be involved in every skirmish around the world,” the devil is in the details. One clearly gets the sense that on the spectrum between Rand Paul and John McCain, Rubio is much closer to the latter.
As Klein suggests, Ted Cruz seems to be the one candidate to have convincingly and coherently articulated that, although he believes in a strong national defense, he won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. For reasons that are politically sagacious, but hopefully also sincere, Cruz has attempted to co-opt a Reaganesque foreign policy. (Cruz’s foreign policy, to the degree it exists, has been derided as “militaristic pessimism,” and — as I’ve argued — that’s not a bad place to be.)
I’m not suggesting Rubio is a warmonger — or that he has naive ideas about our ability to export democracy around the globe. (As Jonah Goldberg has noted, “So far, of the declared candidates for president, the only one who voted for the Iraq war is the Democrat.”) What I am saying, though, is that the public has the right to know exactly where these candidates stand, and that will require drilling down on some fairly nuanced details regarding their foreign policy worldviews. As Klein’s column implicitly suggests, this is a good argument for competitive primaries — and robust debates.
Note: Matt Lewis’ wife formerly consulted for Ted Cruz’s senate campaign, and currently consults for RickPAC.