The Diamond Is Ready. Why Marco Rubio Is My Choice for President in 2028

Before Washington knew his name, Marco Rubio was a kid from the 305. He played football, followed the Dolphins, and graduated from South Miami Senior High School in 1989. My friends walked those same halls. I didn’t. My mother sent me to Our Lady of Lourdes, an all-girls Catholic school. Considering how boy crazy I was, that was probably one of the smartest decisions she ever made.

Maybe that is why Marco has never felt like a distant political figure to me. He came from the Cuban Miami I knew, where people worked hard, talked politics around the dinner table, and never had to be taught what communism could do. His father was a bartender. His mother worked as a hotel maid and cashier. They raised four children, and Marco was the third.

His maternal grandfather, Pedro Víctor García, had a tremendous influence on him. In his memoir, Marco remembered being a boy and boasting that one day he would lead an army of exiles, overthrow Fidel Castro, and become president of a free Cuba. I can see that little boy. I understand why he dreamed it. When Cuba lives inside your family, freedom is not an abstract political word.

My mother carried Cuba with her too. Families like ours know what communism looks like after the speeches are over. We know what it does to a country, to a family, and to the people forced to leave everything behind. We hear its language differently because someone we loved already lived through the ending.

When Marco first appeared on the national stage, I saw the intelligence immediately. He was gifted, ambitious, and able to explain complicated ideas without making people feel stupid. I also thought he was a diamond in the rough. In 2016, when he ran for president, I did not believe he was ready. He knew the issues, but he had not yet grown into the weight of the office. He lost the Florida primary to Donald Trump and suspended his campaign that night.

Ten years later, I see a different man. Defeat did not ruin him. It matured him. Fourteen years in the Senate, years of work in foreign policy and intelligence, and the responsibility of serving as Secretary of State have given him something that talent alone cannot provide. The young politician with all that raw ability has been tested.

In diamond grading, D is the highest color grade and Flawless is the highest clarity grade. No politician is flawless, including Marco Rubio. My point is that the quality was always there. Time and pressure finally revealed it. The diamond is ready.

The Boy From Miami

Marco Antonio Rubio was born in Miami on May 28, 1971, to Mario Rubio Reina and Oriales García Rubio. His parents arrived in the United States from Cuba in 1956. He once described the difference between his public problems and the problems his father faced by saying, “A tough day for my dad was they might be late on the rent.” That one sentence tells you more about his childhood than a page of political biography ever could.

When Marco was eight, his family moved to Las Vegas. They returned to Miami in 1985. Religion was part of his life from the beginning, although his path was not perfectly straight. He was baptized Catholic, spent part of his childhood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, later attended an evangelical church, and eventually returned to Catholicism. He is Catholic today.

After South Miami Senior High, Marco attended Tarkio College in Missouri for a year on a football scholarship. He later attended Santa Fe Community College, earned a political science degree from the University of Florida in 1993, and graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law in 1996. While studying law, he interned for Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. At twenty-five, he worked on Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

Marco married Jeanette Dousdebes in 1998. She is the daughter of Colombian immigrants and once cheered for the Miami Dolphins. They have four children and made their home in West Miami. Washington did not become his identity. Miami remained home.

Learning Politics From the Ground Up

Marco’s first elected position was on the West Miami City Commission in 1998. Two years later, he won a special election to the Florida House of Representatives. He became majority leader and then Speaker of the House in 2006, the first Cuban American to hold that position.

When he became Speaker, he gave legislators a blank book called 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future. He had traveled across Florida asking people what they wanted their government to address, and those conversations became the basis of his agenda. Marco later said fifty seven of the ideas became law. A detailed review counted twenty four that became law and another ten that were enacted in part. Those measures included career academies, curriculum changes, education scholarship tax credits, insurance reforms, a statewide building code, a public health care database, and expanded DNA collection.

Thirty four ideas moving fully or partly into law is a serious record. It also shows something about the way Marco thinks. He listens, studies, organizes, and then tries to turn ideas into policy. That pattern followed him from Tallahassee to Washington.

He also clashed with Governor Charlie Crist over the direction of the Republican Party. When Marco entered the 2010 Senate race, Crist had the money, the name recognition, and the support of much of the Republican establishment. Marco built his campaign from behind, won the Republican nomination, and then defeated Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek in the general election.

Fourteen Years in the Senate

Florida elected Marco to the Senate in 2010 and reelected him in 2016 and 2022. In his last Senate race, he defeated Val Demings by more than sixteen points with 57.7 percent of the vote. He became the first Florida Republican elected to three Senate terms.

During those fourteen years, he served on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence, Appropriations, and Small Business committees. He chaired the Small Business Committee, served as acting chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and later became its vice chairman. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a nonpartisan project of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, ranked him the most effective Republican senator during the 116th Congress.

That Senate record is where the depth people now see in Marco was built. He studied foreign governments, intelligence threats, small businesses, veterans, trade, manufacturing, migration, and the growing danger of American dependence on China. He did not spend fourteen years learning one corner of government. He learned how the pieces connect.

China

Marco was confronting the Chinese Communist Party long before the subject became a standard Republican talking point. He sponsored the Senate version of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The Senate passed it unanimously, the House passed it 417 to 1, and President Trump signed it in 2019.

He was also one of the authors of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which barred goods produced in Xinjiang unless importers could show they were not made with forced labor. It became law in 2021. China sanctioned Marco twice in 2020 over his positions on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

He also warned about American dependence on China for medicine, technology, manufacturing, critical minerals, and supply chains. His argument was never simply about trade. A country that cannot produce what it needs becomes vulnerable to the country that can.

Families, Work, and American Industry

Marco called his economic approach “common good capitalism.” He believed markets should serve the country, its workers, and its families, not only the next quarterly report. During negotiations over the 2017 tax law, he pushed to expand the Child Tax Credit. The final law doubled the maximum credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and increased the refundable portion after Marco threatened to oppose the bill unless working families received more.

He proposed paid family leave, a larger child credit, changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit, incentives for domestic investment, and policies intended to rebuild American manufacturing. Not every proposal became law, but the direction was clear. He wanted Republican economic policy to make it easier to raise a family, reward work, and restore the productive strength of the country.

In 2019, he published a report arguing that American business and public policy had become too focused on short term financial returns and not focused enough on long term investment at home. Today, after supply shortages and growing tensions with China, that warning sounds much less theoretical.

The Paycheck Protection Program

When the economy shut down in 2020, Marco was chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee and became one of the central architects of the Paycheck Protection Program. More than $525 billion was approved through the program during its first four months to help businesses continue paying workers.

PPP was created in an emergency. Fraud and weak oversight became serious problems, and they are part of its history. So are the businesses that used the money for payroll while their doors were closed. Marco helped build the largest part of the federal response aimed directly at keeping small businesses and their employees connected.

Veterans

Marco worked with senators from both parties on veterans’ issues. He helped develop the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which President Trump signed in 2017. The law strengthened protections for whistleblowers and changed the process for disciplining Department of Veterans Affairs employees for misconduct.

He also worked with Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on legislation for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Their presumptive benefits provisions became a central part of the Honoring Our PACT Act. He worked across party lines because sick veterans should never have to become a partisan cause before their government helps them.

Florida

Marco kept Florida’s needs in front of the federal government. He repeatedly sought money for Everglades restoration, water infrastructure, and hurricane recovery. He supported keeping offshore drilling away from Florida’s coast and joined state leaders in pressing presidents of both parties for sustained Everglades funding.

He did vote against the 2021 infrastructure bill, which included money for the Everglades. He opposed the larger package, but that vote belongs in the record along with his many years of direct work for restoration. I do not need to pretend every vote was perfect to know that Florida remained one of his priorities.

Immigration and the Lesson of 2013

In 2013, Marco joined the bipartisan Gang of Eight and helped write a comprehensive immigration bill. It combined border measures with a long process toward legal status and possible citizenship for millions of people living in the country illegally. Applicants would have faced background checks, fines, back taxes, and years of waiting. The Senate passed the bill 68 to 32. The House never brought it to a vote.

Many conservatives believed legalization would happen while enforcement would once again be postponed. They called the bill amnesty, and the issue followed Marco into the 2016 presidential campaign. By then, he was saying immigration reform had to happen in stages, beginning with border security and enforcement.

This is one place where I believe Marco was wrong. I also believe he learned from it. His later positions focused far more heavily on the border, asylum and parole abuse, sanctuary policies, and the difference between legal immigration and allowing the law to collapse. If he runs in 2028, he should explain what he would do now in the same direct way he explains every other serious issue.

What Happened in 2016

Marco entered the 2016 presidential race at Miami’s Freedom Tower. He was young, articulate, bilingual, and already respected for his knowledge of foreign policy. Then Donald Trump changed the entire race. Trump understood the anger in the country in a way the other candidates did not, and Marco made the mistake of trying to fight him with personal insults. It did not sound like Marco because it was not who he was. He later said he regretted it.

Trump defeated him in the Florida primary with 45.7 percent of the vote to Marco’s 27 percent. Marco suspended his campaign that night. He returned to the Senate, won reelection, and spent the following years deepening his work on China, intelligence, industry, foreign affairs, veterans, and working families.

The relationship between Trump and Marco changed too. They went from trading insults during the primary to working together on policy. Marco supported Trump, worked with his administration on Latin America, and made Trump’s shortlist for vice president in 2024. In 2025, Trump placed the foreign policy of the United States in his hands.

I was right that Marco was not ready in 2016. I can say that without insulting the man he was then. Intelligence and talent are not the same as readiness. Sometimes readiness is built through the loss you never wanted and the work you choose to do afterward.

Secretary of State

President Trump nominated Marco to become the seventy second Secretary of State. The Senate confirmed him 99 to 0 on January 20, 2025, making him the first Hispanic American to hold the office. In May, Trump also named him acting National Security Advisor. The last person to hold both positions at the same time was Henry Kissinger.

Marco walked into the State Department with a simple test for its work: “Does it make us stronger? Does it make us safer? And does it make us more prosperous?” That is how foreign policy should be judged. Not by whether it pleases an international conference, but by whether it serves the United States.

His first trip as Secretary of State took him to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. He put our own hemisphere at the front of the agenda, focusing on migration, cartels, security, China’s growing influence, and the Panama Canal.

He also oversaw a major reorganization of the State Department and foreign assistance. Many USAID functions were moved into the department, and programs were required to fit the administration’s foreign policy priorities. The changes were fast and controversial. Some programs were disrupted, and people are entitled to examine the human consequences. I support removing ideological waste from foreign aid, but programs that save lives and strengthen American influence should be judged by what they actually accomplish.

This job has allowed the world to see what people who followed Marco for years already knew. He can sit through hours of questions, move from one region of the world to another, and speak without losing command of the facts. He understands how China affects American manufacturing, how migration affects diplomacy, how energy affects war, and how decisions made in Latin America reach Florida.

He Knows the Language of Communism

At the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in 2021, Marco said, “I hate Marxism and I hate communism.” He explained why in the next sentence: everywhere those systems had been tried, they had led to “tyranny and poverty and exile and oppression.” He then warned that people had made the mistake of believing Marxism was dead.

He was right. Marxism survives by changing the words around it. People who would never openly defend communism will repeat its view of history, its obsession with dividing human beings into oppressors and victims, and its belief that institutions must be captured to remake society. Marco recognizes it because he knows the history and because that history entered his own family.

In 2026, he stood before the Munich Security Conference and spoke about the United States and Europe as members of one Western civilization. He defended sovereignty, faith, national identity, and the inheritance that made the West worth saving. He did not sound embarrassed by his own civilization. I cannot tell you how refreshing that was.

Cuba

For Marco, Cuba has never been an old issue from the Cold War. It is a communist dictatorship ninety miles from Florida, still holding political prisoners and still denying its people basic freedom. Throughout his career, he opposed giving the regime economic and diplomatic rewards without meaningful change. He supported sanctions against officials involved in repression and consistently spoke for dissidents and political prisoners in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

As Secretary of State, he has continued that pressure. In May 2026, he said the status quo in Cuba was unacceptable and that the United States would address it. I believe him. The boy who dreamed of a free Cuba grew into the American official with more power to shape Cuba policy than he had ever held before.

I cannot know what he thinks in private, but I do not have to invent anything. His memoir, his speeches, his legislation, and the policies he has supported for more than twenty years tell the story. A free Cuba has been part of his life since childhood.

Trump is tough, but his toughness is instinctive. Marco’s toughness toward communism comes from history, study, and family. He knows the doctrine, the propaganda, the political networks, and the human cost. That is why I believe he could be even tougher where Cuba and communist influence in our hemisphere are concerned.

The Man I See Now

Marco knows how to speak because he knows what he is talking about. He can explain China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Israel, NATO, migration, manufacturing, faith, and family in language people can understand. He can move naturally between English and Spanish because both belong to him.

His record is conservative. He opposed abortion, supported religious liberty, voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, supported conservative judges, defended gun rights, backed lower taxes and school choice, supported Israel, and pushed for stronger border enforcement and national defense. He has also supported family benefits, industrial policy, and government action to rebuild production when he believed the security of the country required it.

There are parts of his record conservatives will question. Immigration will be one. His support after the Parkland shooting for federal incentives tied to state risk protection laws will be another. Some will think he is too willing to use American power overseas. Those are real policy disagreements, and he should answer them directly.

His use of a Republican Party credit card also became an issue during his Senate and presidential campaigns. The released records showed personal purchases on the card, which he paid himself. The Florida Commission on Ethics found no probable cause that he had violated state ethics law. Marco later said he wished he had never placed personal expenses on it because of the confusion it created. That was careless. It was not a finding of corruption or personal enrichment.

I have looked at the mistakes and the record because I am not choosing a saint. I am choosing the person I believe is best prepared to lead the country. Marco has served in city government, the Florida House, the United States Senate, and the Cabinet. He has worked inside intelligence, foreign affairs, national security, economic policy, and diplomacy. He has written laws, negotiated with Democrats, challenged Republicans, won three Senate elections, lost a presidential primary, and represented the United States around the world.

The next president will face communist China, hostile regimes in our own hemisphere, wars that can spread, cartels that cross borders, artificial intelligence, cyberattacks, mass migration, and a country that must rebuild its ability to manufacture what it needs. Marco has already worked on every one of those problems.

I do not support him because he is Cuban American, although I am proud of what his rise means. I do not support him because we come from the same Miami orbit, although that connection makes his story personal to me. I support him because I watched a remarkably talented young politician become a serious and tested statesman.

In 2016, America met the diamond in the rough. By 2028, we may have the opportunity to choose the man all that pressure produced. The intelligence was always there. Now there is judgment, discipline, experience, and a command of the world few possible candidates can match.

Marco Rubio is my choice for president in 2028.

And Marco, if you ever read this, please remember that little boy and the promise of a free Cuba. The people who understand what was lost are still waiting to see it. So are those of us determined to make sure America never loses the freedom our families found here.

Sources

1. United States Department of State biography https://www.state.gov/biographies/marco-rubio

2. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/R000595

3. Associated Press profile of Marco Rubio https://apnews.com/article/25664371f80dcf3332838352165e4d48

4. Rubio’s childhood dream of a free Cubahttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/marco-rubios-old-school-cuba-policy/384002/

5. GQ interview with Marco Rubio https://www.gq.com/story/marco-rubio-interview-gq-december-2012

6. Review of 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/feb/26/marco-rubio/rubio-claims-57-his-100-ideas-were-made-law-florid/

7. Center for Effective Lawmaking report https://batten.virginia.edu/news/the-do-something-members-of-the-116th-congress-legislative-effectiveness-study-from-the-batten-school-and-vanderbilt-university-identifies-member-success-in-advancing-bills/

8. Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act https://www.cecc.gov/media-center/press-releases/commissioners-reintroduce-hong-kong-human-rights-and-democracy-act

9. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act https://www.cecc.gov/media-center/press-releases/bipartisan-group-of-lawmakers-seeks-answers-from-administration-about

10. Report on domestic investment https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/5/rubio-releases-report-on-domestic-investment

11. Paycheck Protection Program report https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/12/rubio-details-historic-success-of-the-paycheck-protection-program

12. VA accountability law https://www.veterans.senate.gov/2017/6/va-accountability-measure-signed-into-law

13. Gillibrand and Rubio burn pit legislation https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibrand-rubio-statement-on-bipartisan-va-burn-pits-package/

14. Senate vote on the Respect for Marriage Act https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00362.htm

15. Reuters report on Rubio’s confirmation https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-confirms-marco-rubio-secretary-state-voting-continues-2025-01-20/

16. Rubio’s 2025 confirmation hearing https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/nominations-01-15-2025

17. Rubio’s 2026 Senate testimony https://www.foreign.senate.gov/download/060226_rubio_testimonypdf

18. Rubio’s 2026 Munich address https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-at-the-munich-security-conference

19. Reuters report on Rubio’s May 2026 Cuba statement https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/rubio-says-status-quo-cuba-unacceptable-and-us-will-address-it-2026-05-05/

20. GIA diamond grading standards https://www.gia.edu/diamond-quality-factor