Rubio is No Bubble Boy

Ruben Navarrett Jr. on Feb 7, 2016

As for Rubio, his time on the national stage has been no fiesta. Young, smart, telegenic and well-spoken, he seems to inspire half the population and frighten the rest.

After he arrived in the Senate in January 2011, I must have written a dozen columns about him. They were all critical. He had a gift for ticking me off. He always seemed to do what many pundits considered the wrong thing. That's because we either had sky-high expectations of what he should do, or extremely rigid notions of who he should be.

Right-wing Republicans had a hair trigger, and kept waiting for the self-described "son of exiles" to go native and open up the borders. A Rubio staffer once told me how, during the heated debate over the Senate bill, the Cuban-American got angry mail instructing him to "go back to Mexico."

Meanwhile, on the left, many Democrats saw Rubio as a long-term threat and correctly assumed his ambition would take him way beyond Florida. So they attacked him as a sellout, someone who was working against the interests of fellow Hispanics. At speeches, he was often picketed by young Hispanic activists.

Rubio was seen as too white for Hispanics and too Hispanic for whites. He's not alone. Welcome to the Hispanic experience in America.

And he's never felt comfortable in the Senate, which is probably why his first term will be his last no matter what happens with his presidential bid.

I expect Christie, and other Republicans, to keep attacking Rubio. That's politics. But no one can say that the senator has been in a protective bubble. That's not true. And it's not fair.

Pioneers take arrows. And, since he exploded onto the national stage, Rubio has taken more than his share.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.