An American Son: A Memoir

by Marco Rubio

  I’ve enjoyed my friendship with Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey. We have a mutual friend in Florida, and he’s taken a personal interest not only in how I’m adapting to life in the Senate but how my family is dealing with the burdens my office imposes on them. You don’t often hear that politicians behave in private as decently as most people do, but they do, and I appreciate the kindnesses Frank and others here have shown me.

  Chris Coons, a freshman Democrat from Delaware, and I have spent time together fighting for legislation we wrote that incorporates ideas from both parties to stimulate private sector job growth. Even though we have very different political views, both Chris and I feel it’s not just possible but necessary that whenever people can agree to serve a public good without violating their principles, we shouldn’t let partisanship for the sake of partisanship prevent us from doing so.

  I’ve met impressive people outside the Senate, too, whom I doubtlessly would never have had the chance to meet had I not been elected to the Senate. I met the Dalai Lama, a man of inspiring compassion. I had dinner with Henry Kissinger, and listened to him like a student as he analyzed the world and its problems in a learned and entertaining discussion. I even met Bono, in his capacity as an advocate for AIDS sufferers. I’m not starstruck. But I do admit it takes a little while to get used to rubbing shoulders with internationally admired leaders.

  The press scrutiny in Washington takes a little time to get used to as well. I thought it was fairly intense in Tallahassee, but in Washington it reaches another level entirely. Reporters mill around the trains that take senators from their offices to the Capitol, and around the elevators off the Senate floor. At any given moment you can be asked a question about something you haven’t given much consideration to and you don’t have a ready answer for. It sometimes seems like a game show, and you only have a few seconds to give the right answer before a buzzer sounds and you lose. Veteran senators have no problem ignoring them. I’ve seen some of them walk right by a reporter who has asked them a question as if they weren’t there. I haven’t developed that skill yet. The best I’ve been able to do when I don’t have a ready answer is to refer them to my press office to set up an interview.

  I have had experience with opponents using the media in an election campaign to advance a negative interpretation of something they think is a vulnerability. But in Washington, that kind of thing isn’t limited to election years. It’s a fact of life you have to adjust to immediately. Almost as soon as I arrived in the Senate, some so called “birthers” argued that because neither of my parents were naturalized American citizens when I was born, I wasn’t a natural-born citizen. One activist went so far as to gain access to my parents’ immigration records and discovered that my parents first arrived in the United States in 1956, before Castro had seized power in Cuba. That’s when the trouble began.

  On the day when the St. Petersburg Times reported the story, a Washington Post reporter called my office. He was preparing to post another story that implied I had embellished my family’s history for political gain. I had found out that my parents had immigrated in 1956 only a few weeks before, and in an interview with the Miami Herald in September of 2011, I had stated my parents had immigrated before the 1959 revolution. And I intended to discuss their journey more fully as part of this book.

  Nevertheless, I am the son of Cuban exiles. My parents did arrive in the United States before Castro took power. But they had believed they could return to Cuba if things improved there. After the revolution prevailed, and before Castro’s declaration he was a communist and his open embrace of the Soviet Union, my parents had made plans to return because they had grown discouraged with their circumstances in America. But their family in Cuba warned them that Castro was becoming a tyrant and urged them to return to the United States permanently. My grandfather had returned to Cuba, where he intended to remain the rest of his life until the family persuaded him to leave again. I was raised by people who felt a deep pain at the loss of their country. They could never return to Cuba as long as Castro remained in power. That made them exiles in their hearts, and in mine. That’s the way the Cuban exile community, with a few rare exceptions, views them as well. I heard from many Cuban Americans who told me the story had prompted them to research their own family histories. And it prompted me to find out everything I could about my parents’ experience. I obtained their entire immigration file, which included the background check they underwent in Cuba, their birth certificates and marriage license and other documents. In the pages of their file and old passports, my parents’ story, when they were younger than I am, came alive for me—the story of their hopes and disappointments and fears, and the dreams that are a part of their children now.

  I thought the Washington Post story overreached. It made it sound as if my speeches and campaign ads were filled with accounts of how my parents had fled Cuba in fear of their lives as they were chased by Castro’s goons. All I had really said was that my parents were exiles who’d lost their country and made a better life for their children in America. If I had known the exact date of their immigration during the campaign, I would have made the same claim. I would have acknowledged that they came in 1956, that they had wanted to return and couldn’t. In the end, theirs is the story of exile. They had lost their country.

  Of all the heightened media scrutiny I’ve experienced in my first year in the Senate, the most distressing experience didn’t involve anything I did or said. It wasn’t even about an incident in my political career, although it wouldn’t have been reported were I not a public figure.

  In July 2011, Univision broadcast a story about my brother in law, Orlando’s, arrest for drug trafficking a quarter century earlier. I was in high school when he was arrested and had nothing to do with the case. Other media outlets knew about it but never reported on it because it had no bearing on my public office. No one in the Democratic Party would touch it. The story wouldn’t have any political impact. But I knew how much having their private lives broadcast to the nation would deeply hurt my family and that upset me greatly. My sister and her husband are not public figures. Simply being related to a senator doesn’t change that. They are private people who have no role in my political career or my public service. Univision’s decision to lead their national newscast with this story about something that happened to two private people over two decades before exposed my sister to public embarrassment. And, sadly, it was also very painful for my mother who was forced to relive the anguish of that difficult time.

  The scrutiny of the campaign and of my first year in office has affected me in some positive ways. I pay more careful attention to detail now. Whether it is a question I am asked or some form I need to fill out, I do everything now with an eye toward how it could be viewed, maybe out of context, in the future. For much of my political career I was very young, very busy and very inexperienced, and sometimes I was sloppy in some of my practices. The scrutiny of the last three years has changed that. But I also need to balance this concern. For in our fear of generating negative attention, we can lose the purpose of our service.

  In the book of Matthew, Jesus gave us the parable of the talents. It tells of a master who entrusted his three servants with his property according to each of their abilities. One of the servants received five talents. Another received two talents. And a third was given one talent. When he returned from a long absence, the master asked his servants for an accounting of what they did with the money he had left them. The first two servants explained that they each put it to work and doubled its value. Their master was pleased with them and rewarded them. But the third servant was afraid to lose what he was given. So he hid his one talent in a hole in the ground. For that, he was punished by his master.

  I need to be careful not to become like the third servant. So worried about what might be said about me that I end up wasting my opportunity to make a difference. So worried about losing this chance I have been given to serve that I end up burying it in a ho
le in the ground.

  CHAPTER 40

  The End of the Beginning

  IF SERVING IN THE SENATE IS A REMINDER OF ANYTHING, IT is that people come and go. Our desks have the names of those who used them before us carved in them. The hallways are lined with statues of great leaders who served here long ago. Our office buildings are named for men who made their mark here long before we arrived. But they are all gone now. And so it will be for us.

  All my life I’ve been in a hurry to get to my future. Writing a book about my life has forced me to reflect on my past more than I have before. And in my reflection, I realized that time is the one thing I can never reclaim. I will never be a child again. I will never play high school or college football again. I will never watch a Dolphins game with my father again. I will never meet my wife or see my children for the first time again. Those things happened when I was in a hurry, and they will never happen again.

  There are things happening in my life today that will not come again. And, slowly, I’m starting to worry that I won’t learn how to appreciate my blessings in the fleeting moment of their occurrence before I have run out of time.

  By and large, I’ve adjusted to the politics of the Senate. But the job’s effect on my personal life has been more difficult to manage. After giving it considerable thought, Jeanette and I decided that at least for the first year, the family would remain in Miami and I would commute to Washington every week. Our extended family is in Miami, and they are an important support network for Jeanette as she manages, as she has always had to, the greater share of our responsibilities to our children. As our kids have gotten older, they have more activities outside school. When Jeanette needs help managing the family schedule, we have plenty of relatives in Miami who are willing to provide it.

  Jeanette has responsibilities in the community, too. Since March 2011, she has worked as a consultant for the family philanthropic foundation established by Norman Braman, the former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, and for the charitable activities of Norman’s South Florida car dealerships. I got to know Norman when I served in the Florida legislature. He occasionally met with me on behalf of the Miami-Dade Jewish Federation, the Braman Breast Cancer Center at the University of Miami and other local community causes, which he helps support. We’ve become very close friends over the years.

  Jeanette and I traveled to Israel with Norman and his wife, Irma, shortly after my election, and visited two charitable projects the Braman family supports there. During the trip, Jeanette talked a lot with Norman and Irma about the causes she’s involved in, and their conversations inspired Norman to ask Jeanette to help him organize the family’s charitable giving.

  The offer gave me pause. I worried Jeanette wouldn’t have time to do all the work the job would require. Furthermore, I’ve always been wary of working with friends. If something goes wrong at work, it can ruin the personal relationship. Also, Norman is not only a generous charitable donor, he has been a generous donor to my campaigns as well. I worried that my political opponents would drag his good name into controversy by accusing him of hiring Jeanette as a favor to me.

  On the other hand, there was no doubt in my mind she would do an excellent job. Jeanette has a passion for charitable causes. And the Bramans trust her, perhaps the most important qualification for the job. And since I was making less as a senator than I did as a lawyer, the additional income didn’t hurt, either.

  In the end, we both decided she should take the job. And she has done exceptionally well in the position. She’s helped organize the foundation, and set up a formal application and review process for donation requests. She meets with the organizations applying for donations, and conducts follow-up visits. She writes the memoranda on the applications and meets with the Braman family to help them decide which causes they will support. When the decisions are made, she writes the award and rejection letters. Her new job has also been good in other ways as well. After years of having to plan her entire life around me, she now has her own professional identity independent from me. She attends community events not as Senator Rubio’s wife, but as the representative of the Braman Family Foundation. For the first time in our marriage, I have had to stay home with the kids on the weekends while Jeanette attends a work-related function. I have to coordinate my work schedule with her work schedule. She works hard, and the new job does take time. But she loves the work. And she loves the fact that she is helping the Braman family make a difference in the lives of others. I’m happy for her and proud of her.

  The decision for our family to remain in Miami has its disadvantages, though, which I very much regret. I now miss more of my kids’ school events and other important occasions than I ever have before. I’m away for three or four days a week most of the year, which puts more intense pressure on Jeanette. I feel guilty about it, which makes missing her and our kids all the harder to bear.

  My typical workweek begins Monday morning when I drop off the kids at school. I still teach a class at Florida International University on Mondays, after which I head straight to the airport and catch a flight to Washington early in the afternoon. When I arrive, I go directly to my Senate office, where I have a regularly scheduled foreign policy meeting with my staff before the usual Monday afternoon vote on the Senate floor. I go home after the vote, do some reading and call Jeanette and the kids to say good night before I go to bed.

  The next three days of the week are pretty much the same. I work out in the Senate gym in the morning. I try to attend morning Mass, and call Jeanette on the walk to the church. I’m usually back at my desk by eight thirty. The days are filled with calls, meetings, committee hearings and votes. I usually have lunch with the other Republican senators, followed by more meetings, calls and votes.

  Most weeks I’m able to fly home late Thursday afternoon or early evening. I teach a class Friday mornings, and usually work in my Miami office the rest of the day or attend meetings in the community. After two years of campaigning, I try to spend Saturdays with my family, although I can’t always manage it. With very rare exceptions, I always take Sundays off.

  For the first time in my career, my public office is my full-time job. That’s better in one way. I can devote all my professional energies to a single job. But it is tougher on my responsibilities as a husband and father. The difficult balancing act between work and home has become common in contemporary American life. We are blessed to have the financial and social resources to help us strike this balance. And yet it’s still the biggest challenge I face in the Senate.

  To have the right priorities is a sign of maturity and character. And it’s generally accepted in our society that family should be your first priority. No matter what career you’ve chosen, nothing should come before your responsibilities to your loved ones. But that’s often easier said than done. For over fourteen years in public life, I have struggled to keep my family my first priority in deed as well as words.

  My long hours on the Dole campaign almost cost me my relationship with Jeanette. My dedication earned the notice and praise of people in politics, but I almost lost my girlfriend and future wife. As a West Miami city commissioner, I often went out to late-night dinners with the city clerk and city manager after commission meetings, while my new wife waited home alone.

  In Tallahassee, especially in my first year in the legislature, I usually went out after work to socialize with my colleagues, not because I was looking for a good time, but because I wanted to network with prominent politicians and opinion leaders. Jeanette stayed at home, pregnant and alone. When I decided to run for speaker, I traveled the state constantly, and continued traveling after I became speaker. With little children at home, Jeanette saw even less of me.

  All of it was important work. It was all a necessary part of the life I had chosen. But its costs are exorbitant. Increasingly, our entire life—family gatherings, vacations, even visits to the doctor—have to be scheduled around my travels. And most nights, Jeanette has had to bathe, feed and put to be
d four little children, while her husband sends his regrets and calls them on the phone to say good night.

  Now I’m away from home most weeks from Monday morning until Thursday night. During Senate recesses, I have to travel around one of the biggest and most diverse states in the country because my constituents deserve to hear from their senator on a regular basis. And there is, of course, the never-ending pressure on a politician to spend a lot of time raising money for the next campaign. Even when I’m home, I’m distracted by work. I read and send e mails. I talk on the phone to staff and colleagues. I think about legislation or a debate or review documents that require my approval. Like too many of us these days, I’m not as attentive as I should be to the people who need me most.

  I love my wife and children. They are the most important people in my life. If I were ever presented with an inescapable choice between them and politics, I would choose them, of course. But the truth is I would try to find some way to manage both my public and personal responsibilities. That’s my biggest fear. In trying to be both public servant and family man, sometimes I do neither job well enough. It takes singular focus to be very good at anything. How can I have a singular focus for two different jobs? How can I be a great husband and father, if I’m trying to be a great senator?

  I often wonder if I entered politics too early in my life, if it wouldn’t have been better had I waited until my children were grown. Obviously, it would be better for my kids to have a father who came home for dinner every night, who coached their teams and who left his work at the office when he was home. I worry, too, that it might have been better for the people of Florida to have a senator who didn’t refuse speaking invitations or meetings because of a choir recital or a Little League game to attend.