In the almost omnipresent Broadway musical Hamilton, the titular character of Alexander Hamilton is often contrasted with his friend and rival, Aaron Burr. While Hamilton constantly advocates for his beliefs, regardless of their popularity, Burr always holds back, more concerned with ending up on the right side of a debate than the actual details within. As revealed in one of the musical’s standout numbers, what Burr really wants far more than any particular policy is to be in the room where it happens. He achieves that by switching parties and running for the U.S. Senate against Hamilton’s father-in-law. When Hamilton confronts him about it, Burr doesn’t even seem to understand what he’d done wrong, saying that he’d merely seen an opportunity and taken it.
As Marco Rubio surveys the wreckage of a once-promising political career, it’s easy to imagine he similarly fails to see where he went wrong. Like a shark that needs to keep swimming to survive, Rubio has spent the past 18 years jumping from local office to the state legislature to Florida House speaker to the U.S. Senate to presidential candidate, leaving in his wake almost no real accomplishments and a slew of burned bridges. Both Florida GOP bigwigs and the voters themselves now loathe him, making any future political comeback difficult to fathom.
More than his lack of interest in policy-making, more than his seeming eagerness to betray political mentors, more than the Trump locomotive running over the entire Republican Party, Rubio was done in by his complete and utter lack of a political soul. Say what you will about Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich, but you can easily point to certain issues and beliefs that they really do believe in. Rubio, in contrast, primarily believed in Marco Rubio being president, with everything else secondary.
Perhaps at some point in American history that would have been enough, but in a world where voters are as likely to interact with candidates through social media as television ads, Rubio’s soulless inauthenticity stands in stark contrast to the other remaining presidential candidates. One of Bernie Sanders’ main selling points is his authenticity, and Trump’s racist and sexist vitriol are cited by supporters as proof he’s not just another politician. Cruz is nothing if not a true believer in his version of conservatism, and Kasich expanded Medicaid despite the almost universal belief it would doom him in the primary. Even Hillary Clinton, who has always struggled to be seen as authentic, is at her best when she taps into something real (her emotional moment in New Hampshire in 2008 is the most famous, but this exchange offers a good recent example).
In contrast, it’s difficult to think of a single moment where Rubio revealed the man behind the politician or stuck with an unpopular policy because he believed in it. Rubio’s selling points were always about his general election chances and his popularity with GOP officials. His campaign strategy wasn’t to build a base of voters, it was to coast of off some kind of nebulous sense of momentum. He didn’t lead a movement, he led a Frank Luntz focus group. When that faltered, he seemed to have no idea how to campaign, veering from one of the worst debate moments in history (thank you, Chris Christie) to lowering himself to the level of Trump’s vulgar insults. Is it any surprise that Trump’s racist nationalism, then Cruz’s extreme conservatism, and finally Kasich’s sunny suburban conservatism each overtook him in turn?
At the end of Hamilton, Aaron Burr shoots and kills Hamilton in a duel, blaming Hamilton for Burr's own failure to win the presidency. Many, including Rubio himself you can suspect, will blame his loss on the rise of Trump and other factors outside his control and ignore the emptiness of Rubio’s own campaign. After all, Rubio was the perfect presidential candidate—all he was missing was a soul.