Marco’s upside down logic on Cuba
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On July 7th, Senator Marco Rubio delivered a speech said to be about reforming higher education and finding where the jobs of the future will be created. But, it was really about the failed ways of Washington and the character of strong leadership. In one key section he says:
We have learned, painfully, that the old ways no longer work – that Washington cannot pretend the world is as the same it was in the 80s, it cannot raise taxes like it did in the 90s, and it cannot grow government like it did in the 2000s. The race for the future will never be won by going backward.
Just one day later, Mr. Rubio published a column in the New York Times that turned the logic of his jobs speech on its head. He tore into President Obama for saying that the old way of our Cuba policy “hasn’t worked for 50 years,” for accepting that the world had changed since the Cold War, and for trying to help Cubans win their own race for the future by moving Washington away from policies aimed at destroying their country’s system.
The Rubio jobs speech got a respectful reception in the marketplace of ideas, e.g. “Florida senator and 2016 candidate casts himself as a ‘new president for a new age.'” But, in “Marco Rubio’s Embarrassing Defense of Cuban Embargo,” Jonathan Chait drenches his Times op-ed in ridicule.
Citing the evidence that the embargo hasn’t weakened the communist party’s grip on power, but rather has imposed huge and painful costs on the U.S. economy, the Cuban people, and U.S. diplomacy in the region, Chait examines Rubio’s attack on the Obama policy change and writes “The trouble with Rubio’s response is not so much that his response to this reasoning is weak so much as it is nonexistent.”
For the hardliners, this is a problem. In a moment when there are powerful forces at work reshaping the way our country, our people, and our public institutions think about and relate to Cuba, it is striking that one of the nation’s most prominent legislators and political leaders who supports the U.S. embargo cannot make a persuasive argument in that policy’s defense. The increasing anemia of pro-embargo arguments in the real policy arena is becoming increasingly evident.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina promised in December that he’d use all the powers of his office to block funding for the U.S. embassy in Cuba. Yet this week he had to watch the State Department budget bill that he wrote be approved by his own Subcommittee and pass easily through the full Senate Appropriations Committee without any such restrictions. This happened simply because he couldn’t get the votes.
Long-time hardliners are pledging to block the appointment of a U.S. Ambassador to Cuba and hoping to use the State Department budget passed by the House to close the embassy in Cuba, but presidential candidate and former Florida governor Jeb Bush quietly separated himself from the maximalist position. The Guardian reported that when asked if he would allow a US embassy in Havana to open, Bush replied, “I haven’t given thought about undoing a work in progress.”
There are more defections to come. Think about Senators from the Midwest. Cuba spends about $1.7 billion every year importing foreign food to feed its people because it cannot meet their nutritional requirements with domestic production. Even though it’s legal for U.S. producers to sell into the Cuban market, U.S. restrictions on trade and financing have caused Cuba to meet it needs by importing food from our foreign competitors, with whom trade and obtaining credit is much easier.
If you sit in the U.S. Senate representing Kansas and you know that Cuba has not imported U.S. wheat for five years, how much longer can you expect your farmers to sit still for explanations about why legislation to eliminate trade barriers to Cuba hasn’t moved in the Senate?
How much longer must a Senator from Iowa explain to his or her constituents that the nation’s number one producer of corn, pork, and eggs can’t maximize sales to a market of 11 million people 90 miles off our shores because we have a policy that prefers that Cubans remain hungry or that their government buys food from China?
Sooner or later those Senators are going to get off the fence and join the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Soybean Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers, the National Farmers Union, and other commodity groups who are supporting legislation to end the trade embargo of Cuba. Why? Because it’s good for the Cuban people and money in the pockets of their constituents and farmers. As Senator Rubio says, the race for the future will never be won by going backward.
Don’t be surprised if this logic someday moves to Florida. Twenty-nine states have lower unemployment rates than the Sunshine State. A big driver of job creation in Florida can be found in the leisure and hospitality industries. And yet, when Florida’s Representatives in Congress vote to stop new flights and ferries from serving the Cuban market they’re really voting to take jobs away from Orlando, Tampa, and Miami.
And guess what? The Florida State Supreme Court has just ruled that when the Florida State Legislature created eight congressional districts through the use of illegal gerrymandering it operated with unconstitutional intent. Most of those districts are represented in Congress by Members of the Florida delegation who constantly vote to place restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba at the direct expense of their constituents’ jobs and basic right to travel freely. This can’t go on much longer.
We are witnessing a significant moment of Cuba policy reform. The old ways of doing things never worked before and won’t work now. In Rubio’s job speech, he offers a lesson about leadership in an era of profound change. Generations don’t overcome their challenges through resistance, but by adaptation:
Businesses integrating new technologies, workers learning new skills, and leaders leading in a new direction.
In Cuba policy, that new direction was charted on December 17, 2014.
(From Cuba Central)
