Marco Rubio sharpens commander-in-chief pitch
Jeb Bush may have stolen the spotlight this week, but Marco Rubio wants voters to know heâs been right on foreign policy all along. He was right, he said, when he warned the U.S. to immediately arm moderate Syrian rebels two years ago â before the radicals in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant began beheading hostages and declaring a caliphate. He says he was right when he called on President Barack Obama to employ a more aggressive show of force against Libya four years ago. And he says he was right when he insisted that, absent a more robust strategy, Islamic extremists would use Libya as a safe haven, as they are doing now. As for Bush, Rubio called him a âsmart, intelligent individualâ who is âcertainly capable of learning aboutâ foreign affairs. Story Continued Below The Florida Republican senator, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, is beginning an aggressive effort to sell voters on his judgment and foresight on matters like Syria, Iran, Libya, Russia and Ukraine, making the case there should be no doubt he has the wherewithal to lead the country at a time of war. Itâs a necessary push for a first-term senator and potential presidential hopeful who is trying to convince GOP voters that he isnât a policy lightweight lacking executive experience, but rather a deep thinker who is fully engaged in complex foreign affairs and can manage the countryâs sprawling national security apparatus. The question, voters will ask, is what kind of âjudgmentâ the 2016 candidates showed each time a crisis from abroad has flared up, he said. âI feel very comfortable about my record,â Rubio told POLITICO in an interview Thursday. Rubio wouldnât compare his views to other potential 2016 foes, though he offered what seemed to be a backhanded compliment to Bush, who gave a much-noticed speech on foreign affairs this week. Senators, Rubio said, are able to deal with foreign policy matters âon a regular basis,â unlike governors who tend to matters more parochial in their states. When asked whether he had a handle on Bushâs foreign policy views from their time together in Florida, Rubio said: âThereâs not a lot of foreign policy in the governorâs office. He certainly is someone who is capable of learning about it, and I know he has a natural interest and curiosity about these issues. And heâs someone who is well-read and well-traveled.â A Bush spokesperson declined to comment. In essence, Rubio is gambling that even war-weary voters will get behind a candidate who espouses views that could draw the U.S. into more foreign conflicts â all led by a young and untested president. Rubioâs comments come as foreign policy has been thrust to the forefront of the 2016 campaign. As threats grow from abroad, nuclear negotiations on Iran reach a critical juncture and Congress engages in a consequential debate over authorizing force against ISIL, potential Republican candidates are trying to show how they differ from Obama â and one another. Bush, a former Florida governor, used a speech this week in Chicago to lay out his most extensive thinking yet on foreign policy, detailing a hawkish worldview that seemed close to that of his brother, former President George W. Bush, as well as Rubioâs. In the past year, Rubio has taken an increasingly high profile on foreign policy, especially after his role trying to shepherd through a comprehensive immigration bill that stalled and provoked a backlash on the right. On the Senate floor, in donor events and in speeches, heâs been an outspoken advocate for a more robust U.S. role, winning back some conservative skeptics who viewed him warily after the messy immigration fight. Indeed, Rubio, is far less likely these days to engage in the daily battles over domestic policy consuming the Senate. Even in December, four hours before the government was on the brink of a possible shutdown without a fiscal deal, Rubio was on the Senate floor in the dead of night, speaking to an empty chamber about a topic virtually no one else was discussing: national security. âAs you look around the world,â Rubio said at the time, âyou start to see the need for American leadership.â At 43 years old, Rubio, who was elected to the Senate in 2010 after serving 8Â½ years in the Florida Legislature, including state House speaker, is trying to defuse nervousness in GOP quarters that the party canât afford to elect a political neophyte after watching Obamaâs meteoric rise in public life. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the son of Cuban immigrants has traveled the world extensively in an official capacity â from East Asia to the Middle East â as he has built up a foreign policy portfolio he hopes to sell to primary voters. Since his Senate victory, which sent then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist bolting from the GOP, Rubio has increasingly advocated an aggressive U.S. presence in the world, defending the need for foreign aid even to troubled countries like Egypt, strongly supporting the U.S. embargo against Cuba and backing immediate sanctions on Iran even as multilateral negotiations over the regimeâs nuclear program take shape. Yet, at times, heâs broken from the neoconservatives who dominated George W. Bushâs administration. When Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took to the floor and mounted a nearly 13-hour filibuster criticizing Obama on the use of drones two years ago, Rubio spoke in support of his potential 2016 rivalâs cause â even as defense hawks like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham criticized Paul as naive. While Rubio supported an aggressive posture against the regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, he opposed Obamaâs 2013 call for Congress to authorize military strikes. In the interview, Rubio was unsparing in his criticism of the Obama administration, saying the president has erroneously employed a âlight footprintâ approach to hotspots around the world. He said he opposed the Obama administrationâs policy toward Syria in 2013 because the âpresident couldnât lay out a strategy.â âIt should not have been a military strike per se, but it should have been fully engaged in arming, training and equipping non-jihadist Syrian rebels so they can become the group â not just for Assad and to remove Syria from the orbit of Iran, but also it would serve as a way of blocking out the emergence of groups like ISIS,â Rubio said, using an alternative acronym for ISIL. âThatâs what I warned about from the very beginning.â Libya is expected to be a major flash point in the presidential race, especially if Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state in Obamaâs first term, emerges as the Democratic nominee. Already, critics like Paul have sought to tie Rubio to the chaos in that country: A senior Paul aide said recently that Rubio had been on the Obama âcheerleadingâ foreign policy team when the U.S. and its allies attacked Libya, leading to the creation of a âJihadist wonderland.â While Rubio backed the military action against then-Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi in 2011, he said the presidentâs strategy was meandering and indecisive, allowing the conflict to drag on and for instability to ensue. âThe situation in Libya was also predictable, and I warned about that,â Rubio said. âThat conflict with Qadhafi took too long. Had the U.S. engaged fully and decisively, the conflict would have ended sooner. We would have less independent militias â and it would have been easier for a central government to take root and become in control of the country. âI wanted to engage but engage decisively,â Rubio said. âYouâre better off not intervening than to intervene like that.â Despite the criticism of Obamaâs record, Rubio is reluctant to criticize the Iraq War launched by George W. Bush in 2003 that has contributed greatly to the chaos in the region. He wonât say whether he would have voted against the war authorization in 2002 had he been a senator, saying that âhindsight is 20/20.â He argued that the intelligence community reported at the time that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction â which turned out to be false â and that the world was forced to respond to Iraqâs violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions. âI understand why people voted for that,â Rubio said. âIt turns out in hindsight that some of that intelligence was wrong. That being said, the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein not in power. Obviously, if we knew today what we knew back then, I would imagine the Bush administrationâs approach would have been different.â Whether Rubio is right over how to handle ISIL remains to be seen. Heâll have a chance to directly shape the debate when the Foreign Relations Committee begins extensive hearings on the presidentâs war resolution in the coming weeks. Rubio is calling for a broader scope to give Obama and the next commander in chief wide latitude to wage war. And heâs not ruling out sending in ground troops, saying that ISIL âcan only be defeated by confronting them on the ground.â âThe question is who should have the predominant share of that effort,â Rubio said. âItâs my opinion that the predominant share of the ground effort should fall on local governmentsâ like Turkey and Jordan. The U.S., he said, should provide logistical, air and intelligence support with a âlimited numberâ of U.S. special forces on the ground. He wouldnât put a number on the amount of troops to send into conflict, saying such a proposal should be made by military commanders on the ground. âThere is no magic number,â Rubio said.