A feature story in the Washington Post this week cites inconsistencies in Senator Marco Rubio's (R-FL) official Senate bio and naturalization documents, as to when his parents immigrated to the United States. The bio claims that Rubio's parents came to America following Fidel Castro's takeover. Actually, they arrived three years prior to the revolution. Castro was living in Mexico at the time, and Cuba was closely aligned with the Eisenhower administration, while U.S. corporations and organized crime syndicites ran their economy.

 

As the Miami Herald points out, Rubio has on more than one occasion acknowledged as much. But he's also been reticent to correct those that refer to his ”son of exiles“ narrative. As other interview clips surface, it's also clear that the Senator himself has flown fast and loose with his history, using language that could easily give the impression that his mother and father were refugees that fled a socialist regime, if it doesn't directly claim it. Because Rubio has made this narrative such a centerpiece of his personal and political identity, it stands as no surprise that people are taken aback by it.

 

To be fair, Rubio's parents did leave while Cuba was ruled by a brutal, fascist dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Backed by the U.S. after overthrowing the elected President, Batista aligned himself with the wealthy plutocrats and forbade democratic mainstays like organized labor strikes, while unemployment skyrocketed, wages sunk and the middle-class disappeared. For fairly obvious reasons though, that's not as politically palatable when evoked by a member of the modern GOP as a reference to a ”socialist“ dictator would be.

 

Rubio has also made something of a name for himself by being first in line to liberally use the ”socialist“ when attacking Democratic policies. Because his own narrative is inherently framed as the basis of such authority to do so, it's not surprising that it is being attacked for such glaring inconsistencies. The news media was abuzz with reports that the gaffe would cost the Senator a potential VP spot on the 2012 GOP political ticket. But campaign analysts had already noted that Rubio's polling numbers as a VP were neutral, not improving various Republican candidates' numbers in either Florida or battleground states in general.

 

The mainstream media has also been quick to presume that Rubio's presence on a ticket somehow shores up the Latino vote, a factor much more complicated than often noted. Cuban-Americans tend to be very insular, identifying themselves as Cuban first, then American, with a focus on assimilation, not unlike Italian immigrants a generation or two earlier. Other Spanish immigrants often view them as being snobbish, looking down on other members of the Latino-American community who tend to be more apt to bond together under their shared Latino heritage, especially politically.

 

It is well known among political experts that Cubans tend to vote Republican, while the Latino-American bloc leans left as moderate Democrats. As such, most polling experts put little weight on a Cuban-American bottom half of the ticket; unlikely to draw large numbers of other Latinos, while rallying a group that already turns out in high numbers to vote Republican.

 

So while Rubio's star is unlikely to rise higher than perhaps a leadership role in the Senate, or a future cabinet position, this little snafu is unlikely to sink his ship. He's already survived the GOP credit card scandal, working a high-paying job with a lobbying firm while Speaker of the Florida House, a personal balance sheet that contradicted his deficit hawk rhetoric, and missteps with a murky PAC. Barring someone finding a body in his trunk, his Senate seat is probably safe for as long as he wants to occupy it.

 

The 40 year-old Senator says he's working on a biography to convey his ”unique American story,“ sales of which may be the only real penalty now that his biography is being splashed all over the news for free and will certainly need to portray his more pedestrian roots as the son of immigrants who came to this country for pretty much the same reason everyone else does (or did) – economic opportunity.

 

In the end, Rubio seems to have done little more than what all public figures have been doing for an eternity; he crafted an appealing self-narrative and sold it to voters. Thrusting himself into the limelight on controversial terms, it was bound to become subject to inspection, and he's probably learned a lesson that is becoming familiar to all public figures: in the information age, words once spoken out into the ether, are now forever captured – intended or not. In such permanence, none of us are any longer afforded the luxury of spinning our own yarn. Instead, we've got to do the best with the stories as they happened, even if they make us seem a little less perfect than we'd like.

 

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Dennis Maley is a featured columnist and editor for The Bradenton Times. An archive of his columns is available here. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com.