Amid the upheavals of Donald Trump’s second term, Marco Antonio Rubio is getting a fresh look as a possible Republican standard bearer in 2028.
The secretary of state, speaking at the White House press podium in early May, stirred conservative hearts with a riff on the American dream that included this ad hoc line: ‘My hope for America … is to continue to be the place where anyone, from anywhere, can achieve anything.’ The quote – one sentence in a soliloquy on the virtues of America on the eve of its 250th birthday – went approvingly viral, and renewed speculation about Rubio’s presidential ambitions.
Amazingly, Rubio was speaking to the White House press corps in part because of an internet meme. The meme has him slouched on a sofa in the Oval Office assuming the identity of whatever improbable job urgently needed to be done in the world: acting president of Venezuela, shah of Iran, or the overnight shift at Waffle House. (At one point last year, Rubio was serving as secretary of state, national security advisor, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and the national archivist.)
The meme, displayed as Rubio in a humorous costume of the moment, developed organically but is premised on the idea that he is one of the very most competent and effective members of the Trump inner circle.
With Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, out on maternity leave, Rubio jokingly assumed her duties, but his answer to the gloriously softball question, ‘What is your hope for America?’ and ability to coherently and charismatically speak on a wide variety of topics reminded Washington and other political junkies that Rubio is a top-level political athlete who can embody both the populist and establishment wings of the GOP.
Rubio got his start in national politics when the Republican Party was at a historic low. In 2009, Republicans had lost the White House to Democrat Barack Obama, who threatened to transform American politics. In the US Senate, the GOP held only 40 seats, allowing the Democratic majority to overcome the filibuster and ram through its legislative agenda – including tax increases, financial industry regulation and a much larger government role in health care, more liberal than any since President Lyndon Johnson’s term in the 1960s.
The Republican Party was in full panic mode and recruited Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a popular moderate, to run for an open US Senate seat. Crist immediately drew millions of fundraising dollars and was seen as a lock to keep the seat red.
Rubio entered the Senate race as a long shot at best. He campaigned on domestic issues of tax reform and smaller government and caught lightning in a bottle. By the end of the primary campaign, Crist, faced with Rubio’s rapid ascent, had withdrawn to run as an independent. In the final tally, Rubio crushed Crist and the Democratic candidate and went to Washington with big momentum as a young, energetic and charismatic leader of a party rebuilding itself on the fly.
Effectively, Rubio had won as a Tea Party-esque populist candidate against a Republican establishment candidate. When he got to Washington, he embraced some aspects of traditional, Reagan–Bush era Republican priorities, including a world view that embraced a global leadership role for the United States.
In the Senate, Rubio was both show horse and work horse. He immediately went to the Foreign Relations Committee, a traditional proving ground for future presidential candidates. As staff director of that committee from 2012 to 2015 during Rubio’s first Senate term, I saw Senator Rubio up close. He worked hard on foreign policy issues, providing much of the committee’s legislative agenda and made a name for himself with thoughtful conservative positions on a host of global issues.
Rubio’s parents immigrated to Florida from Cuba in the 1960s, before he was born. His heritage on issues related to Cuba – strong opposition to the Castro regime and promotion of human rights and democracy – are at the core of Republican Party orthodoxy, but his agenda spanned the globe. As top Republican on the subcommittee for Asia-Pacific in 2013 and 2014, for example, he led Senate efforts to pressure China over its repression of Hong Kong. He spoke eloquently on the Senate floor against what conservatives saw as Obama’s very weak 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
He ran for the presidency in 2016 and was immediately put in the top tier of candidates. After finishing second to Trump in the Florida primary, however, Rubio withdrew from the race and ran for reelection to his Senate seat. He spent the next few years reorienting his politics and more fully embracing the populist side of the GOP.
Since that bruising 2016 primary battle, in which Rubio unwisely tried to battle Donald Trump in the rhetorical gutter of personal insults, Rubio has earned Trump’s trust and even admiration. Trump joked that Rubio’s speech in March at a NATO meeting was so good at repairing relations with aggrieved European allies, who gave a standing ovation, that he ‘might have to fire’ Rubio.
Indeed, Rubio’s policy and communication skills are essential to Trump’s administration. His dual roles as secretary of state and national security advisor are equaled only by Henry Kissinger from 1973 to 1975. The January 2026 seizure of Nicolas Maduro and tacit takeover of the Venezuelan government without high dollar cost or occupation are credited directly to Rubio (and the US military).
Historically, the Republican Party has been successful at the ballot box when it has credibly joined together its populist and big-business establishment wings. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was able to capture popular discontent with the appearance of American global weakness but also attract support from corporate leaders looking for relief from government regulation. Rubio, who can speak to both the average American and the chieftains of big business, may be the best hope of Republicans in 2028. With immigrant parents who worked as a hotel maid and a bartender, Rubio’s working class, blue-collar roots also personify the American dream: anyone from anywhere can do anything. That may turn out to be exactly what lifts him to the highest office in the land.
