As we’ve seen, Marco Rubio, 44, continues to weather criticism that he’s too inexperienced to be a presidential nominee–let alone president. He looks younger than his years–and a lot younger than Ted Cruz, who is only five months older. But this shouldn’t be about optics; it should be about experience and knowledge.
At a recent South Carolina town hall, Rubio slammed Jeb Bush for having “zero” foreign policy experience. He then went into glibly contrasting detail about all that he knew by virtue of his membership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Only problem with that: He doesn’t just miss a lot of Senate votes, he also misses a majority of committee meetings. In fact, Rubio–who literally has the worst missed-vote record of any current senator–has missed 60 percent of Foreign Relations hearings since joining the Senate in 2011. That number is as of November 2015, and the junior senator’s record has only worsened.
What he does have, increasingly, is experience in spinning disputable Senate credentials to his advantage to gullible primary voters and caucus goers.