The Case for Rubio ’28 Is Overstated

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had his mic-drop moment in the James S. Brady Press Room, moonlighting in yet another Trump administration post—this time filling in for White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at the podium while she is on maternity leave.

Reporters guffawed at Rubio’s ’90s rap references and then filed stories talking him up as a 2028 presidential prospect, especially in contrast with Vice President J.D. Vance (who was actually in Iowa at the time).

It’s not totally insane in the membrane, as the kids said 33 years ago. President Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser is a talented guy. Rubio has now been in the national spotlight for over 16 years and has matured since his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination a decade ago.

But Rubio is also being feted as a throwback to pre-Trump Republicanism, which is also why he is currently being overrated for 2028. That’s not to say that a Rubio nomination can’t happen. There are, however, some roadblocks that are being widely ignored in favor of viral clips that make people misty-eyed for the return of Ronald Reagan.

The Trump vice president that Rubio should be compared to isn’t Vance, but Mike Pence. Pence was supposed to build a bridge between Reaganism and Trumpism. While he dutifully served the president and his political fortunes would likely look different if Trump’s first term had ended on January 5, 2021, Pence largely failed at this project and has since gone in a different direction. Rubio has been much more successful because he understands Trump’s appeal better and has internalized some of the populist critique of older GOP ways of doing business. 

Rubio could have much more comfortably and confidently defended Trump’s foreign policy than Pence did in his 2019 exchange with former Vice President Dick Cheney that was an early indicator of where both veeps were going to end up. Rubio would have been better able to articulate Trump’s departures from past Republican foreign policy and also his continuity with it.

But the energy around Rubio comes primarily from people who would like to see a major departure from Trump not just in style but also substance. He would need to retain these supporters while remaining in Trump’s good graces. He probably needs Trump’s explicit blessing to leapfrog Vance. Ask Nikki Haley, who has a similar appeal to Rubio, how easy it is to walk this tightrope.

As much as they hate Vance, the Never Trumpers will ruthlessly exploit this tension if Rubio runs. Why? Because there is nothing a Never Trumper hates more than a Republican they suspect agrees with them about Trump personally but has made different (and especially successful) calculations about how to navigate his leadership of the party.

Second, a lot of Rubio’s admirers imagine that the Republican Party needs an articulate defender of Trump’s Iran War. If Iran is still dominating the conversation by the midterm elections, much less 2028, that assumption is going to be severely tested, to put it mildly. 

The third underrated challenge Rubio faces is that the political conditions would have to be bad enough for Vance to be vulnerable in the primary but good enough that the secretary of state would have a decent chance in the general election. There are a few such scenarios that seem plausible: a Vance scandal, a Trump–Vance falling out. But Rubio’s boosters heavily overestimate how big of a difference his communication skills can make in a bad national political environment for Republicans.

Rubio’s basic political pitch hasn’t won in the Republican primaries since at least 2012, despite having high-quality candidates making it (including Rubio himself in 2016). It hasn’t won a national election since 2004. And Trump’s own second-term appeals to “morning in America” at a time when voters are more in an American Carnage mood have generally fallen flat.

Finally, while Rubio wants to be president and Trump wants his successor to work for it, his calm and good humor suggest that he isn’t running yet. He does not feel the pressure of a campaign. He has the luxury of time, and when that is no longer true, things may be different.