'American Son' a tale of two Marco Rubios, child of exiles and politician 'in cycle'

Marco Rubio felt out of place for a moment.
On the cusp of being sworn in as Florida’s newest senator in 2011, the Miami-born son of Cuban exiles had wandered away from his family during a tour of George Washington’s Mount Vernon home.

“I watched them from afar for a minute, laughing and talking in Spanish and English,” Rubio writes in his new book, An American Son.

“My first thought was how different my family was, how different I was, from the men and women who had lived in this place, and from the Americans who had founded our nation,” he writes.

“We looked and sounded different from the descendants of George Washington’s generation,” he continues. “But we embodied everything America’s founding generation had hoped America would become.”

That contradictory sense — of otherness but connectedness —is central to the immigrant experience in America. And it’s a key to understanding Rubio, whose book dropped just as his name began rising on the shortlist of potential running mates for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

In 303 breezily written pages, the outgoing cocksure Rubio sometimes comes across as shy and plagued at times by doubt. He dwells on the spiritual yet seems to obsess about money, which was always tight. For a politician so apt to talk about the future, he seems equally bound to the past.

A 41-year-old lawyer, Rubio first won political office 14 years ago on the West Miami City commission.

Rubio’s conservative worldview was shaped by being both the child of immigrants and a member of Miami’s Cuban exile community, which treats him like everyone’s collective son. When Rubio served in the Florida House, he often downplayed the fact that he was the state’s first Cuban-American House speaker, serving from 2007-2009. Now he celebrates that past.

“I often feel as if I live in two worlds,” Rubio writes at one point, summing up the sentiment of anyone who lives in Miami-Dade. “I am the son of exiles.”

So he’s not just An American Son, which reads like two books in one.

More here

Ana Navarro, CNN pundit

Look who's gone all big-timey, Ana Navarro, now a Republican pundit for CNN. She was on Anderson Cooper's show last night talking immigration

And here she is in Gut Check:

“Latinos have been disillusioned with President Obama’s broken immigration promises. Though this doesn't come close to his vow to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform in his first year, it will be received with enthusiasm and celebration by most Latinos."
 
"Republicans should tread carefully and use a measured tone in responding to this announcement. The DREAM Act kids make a compelling story and have broad support among Hispanics. Republicans should express sympathy for these young people and at the same time attack Obama for taking blatantly political action to help his re-election prospects. Republicans should also remind Latinos that Obama has a record of immigration promises un-kept and economic policies that's led to 11% Latino unemployment. But to position themselves against a group of young people who sound American, look American and feel American would be a mistake. The focus should be not on the kids, but on Obama's political motives and lack of leadership in not working with Congress on a real and permanent solution. The constitutional argument is a technical response to what is an emotional and political issue.”