An American Son: A Memoir (46 page)

T
HE TWO QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK ME MOST OFTEN ABOUT my job are “Was it what you expected?” and “What surprised you the most?” My answer is the same to both questions. What has surprised me the most is that life as a U. S. senator is pretty much what I expected it to be.

My background as a state legislative leader prepared me fairly well for my experience in the Senate, although the place certainly has a few unique attributes. The U.S. Senate is one of the few legislative bodies, if not the only legislative body, where a simple majority can’t accomplish anything. Without the agreement of every single senator—what is referred to as “unanimous consent”—even basic, mundane tasks can be difficult to complete.

In a legislative body with only a hundred members, everyone knows everyone else. It’s easier for personal animosities to flare in the House of Representatives, which has 435 members. Many of them have never met each other and have only encountered some of their colleagues in debates over legislation. Many members are strangers to each other, and it’s easier to dislike a stranger. There are no strangers in the Senate. Eventually, our paths all cross.

When you debate with colleagues in the Senate, you’ve met them, have come to know them and, often, have worked with them on other legislation. And you’re going to need their cooperation in the future, if only to get unanimous consent for a minor request. When the lights are off and the
cameras aren’t watching, senators interact and socialize with each other like people everywhere do, even if they have political differences. They talk about their families, sports and the normal stuff of life. Of course, we talk shop, too. Senators are always looking to join with one or more members of the opposite party to sponsor legislation. The rules of the Senate make it impossible for most legislation to pass without some bipartisan support.

But there are other motivations for bipartisan cooperation as well. First, your constituents appreciate it. Most Americans want to see Republicans and Democrats working together for the good of the country. It’s refreshing, too, to be able to break free from the usual constraints of partisanship and work with colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Even on issues where there isn’t bipartisan agreement, most senators respect opposing points of view, especially if those views rest on principle and not politics.

Building good relationships with your colleagues, based on mutual respect, and working cooperatively to address the country’s challenges is an important and honorable undertaking. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of the convictions that brought you to office. Setting aside our differences cannot mean setting aside our principles. I campaigned on one central theme: the country faced immense challenges; the election should be about the direction of the country; and, if elected, I would not, in small or large ways, shrink from my responsibility to defend the principles of a free people and the great nation they built.

In my first year, I was asked to vote against a rule banning earmarks, which are funds targeted to specific projects that aren’t meritorious or, at the least, are a very low priority to all but a relative few, and have in the past been the means of public corruption. I was asked to vote to raise the debt limit and for very short-term budgets that ignored rather than solved our problems. I refused. I promised the people of Florida I would work to find the right long-term solutions to the nation’s biggest problems, not evade them by resorting to stopgap measures and special-interest deal making. I intend to keep my promise.

Even with all the challenges America faces, there is still no nation on earth with a brighter future. The fundamental source of our nation’s greatness remains our people. And while their government and its leaders might be languishing, the American people have not diminished one bit. We are still as creative, innovative and ambitious as ever. Even as you read these
words, the next great American idea is being worked on somewhere in our country. Ultimately, America will remain great because our people are great. The job of our government is to make it easier for our people to do what they do better than any people in the history of the world.

If there is one nagging concern I have after my first year in the Senate it is the lack of urgency in Washington to address the challenges we face. Many in Washington wrongly assume that our spiraling debt, our broken tax code and our regulatory overreach can wait until after the next election to be confronted. I believe that the longer we wait to solve these issues, the harder they will be to solve. With each passing year, the solutions to these challenges become more painful and implementing them potentially more disruptive. I had hoped that my first years in the Senate would be a historic time, a time when the urgency of the moment compelled our leaders to act in bold and decisive ways to protect our nation and its future. Instead, sometimes I feel as if I have joined a theater company where every vote and every statement is calculated for maximum political effect rather than public benefit. And yet I believe with all my heart that America will confront and solve the challenges we face in this new century. We always have and we will again. And the sooner we do it the better.

On an individual level, what gets you in trouble in the Senate with your colleagues is the kind of behavior that will get you in trouble in any other workplace. If you’re a showboat who pontificates on every subject the Senate debates. If you mislead or lie to people about your intentions or fail to keep promises you’ve made. If you try to make yourself look good by making a colleague look bad. Those things will get you into trouble in the Senate, just as they would anywhere else.

That doesn’t mean the Senate is the epitome of bipartisan comity. There are plenty of partisan games played all the time there. When a senator is “in cycle”—in other words, up for reelection at the end of the Congress—the other side tries to make life as difficult as possible for him or her. As I write this in 2012, Republican senators Scott Brown and Dean Heller are running for reelection, and the Democratic leadership is constantly trying to force them into making politically difficult votes or deny them opportunities to show leadership on an issue that might help their reelection.

However, I have had mostly positive relations with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I have found that senators with whom I disagree very
strongly on issues are still hardworking, decent people who are well informed and have done their homework, even if their policy conclusions baffle me. It’s a privilege to debate them, and to work with them when we are in agreement.

In my short time in the Senate, I’ve come to know senators from both parties who have offered me their friendship and counsel. Jim DeMint continues to be a source of sound advice and an inspiration to me. Joe Lieberman encouraged me to get involved in foreign policy issues. I’ve traveled overseas with him, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and benefited from their many years of experience in national security. Whether you agree or disagree with them, they are statesmen who put our country’s security before all else.

I’ve enjoyed my friendship with Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey. We have a mutual friend in Florida, and he’s taken a personal interest not only in how I’m adapting to life in the Senate but how my family is dealing with the burdens my office imposes on them. You don’t often hear that politicians behave in private as decently as most people do, but they do, and I appreciate the kindnesses Frank and others here have shown me.

Chris Coons, a freshman Democrat from Delaware, and I have spent time together fighting for legislation we wrote that incorporates ideas from both parties to stimulate private sector job growth. Even though we have very different political views, both Chris and I feel it’s not just possible but necessary that whenever people can agree to serve a public good without violating their principles, we shouldn’t let partisanship for the sake of partisanship prevent us from doing so.

I’ve met impressive people outside the Senate, too, whom I doubtlessly would never have had the chance to meet had I not been elected to the Senate. I met the Dalai Lama, a man of inspiring compassion. I had dinner with Henry Kissinger, and listened to him like a student as he analyzed the world and its problems in a learned and entertaining discussion. I even met Bono, in his capacity as an advocate for AIDS sufferers. I’m not starstruck. But I do admit it takes a little while to get used to rubbing shoulders with internationally admired leaders.

The press scrutiny in Washington takes a little time to get used to as well. I thought it was fairly intense in Tallahassee, but in Washington it
reaches another level entirely. Reporters mill around the trains that take senators from their offices to the Capitol, and around the elevators off the Senate floor. At any given moment you can be asked a question about something you haven’t given much consideration to and you don’t have a ready answer for. It sometimes seems like a game show, and you only have a few seconds to give the right answer before a buzzer sounds and you lose. Veteran senators have no problem ignoring them. I’ve seen some of them walk right by a reporter who has asked them a question as if they weren’t there. I haven’t developed that skill yet. The best I’ve been able to do when I don’t have a ready answer is to refer them to my press office to set up an interview.

I have had experience with opponents using the media in an election campaign to advance a negative interpretation of something they think is a vulnerability. But in Washington, that kind of thing isn’t limited to election years. It’s a fact of life you have to adjust to immediately. Almost as soon as I arrived in the Senate, some so called “birthers” argued that because neither of my parents were naturalized American citizens when I was born, I wasn’t a natural-born citizen. One activist went so far as to gain access to my parents’ immigration records and discovered that my parents first arrived in the United States in 1956, before Castro had seized power in Cuba. That’s when the trouble began.

On the day when the
St. Petersburg Times
reported the story, a
Washington Post
reporter called my office. He was preparing to post another story that implied I had embellished my family’s history for political gain. I had found out that my parents had immigrated in 1956 only a few weeks before, and in an interview with the
Miami Herald
in September of 2011, I had stated my parents had immigrated before the 1959 revolution. And I intended to discuss their journey more fully as part of this book.

Nevertheless, I am the son of Cuban exiles. My parents did arrive in the United States before Castro took power. But they had believed they could return to Cuba if things improved there. After the revolution prevailed, and before Castro’s declaration he was a communist and his open embrace of the Soviet Union, my parents had made plans to return because they had grown discouraged with their circumstances in America. But their family in Cuba warned them that Castro was becoming a tyrant and urged them to return to the United States permanently. My grandfather
had returned to Cuba, where he intended to remain the rest of his life until the family persuaded him to leave again. I was raised by people who felt a deep pain at the loss of their country. They could never return to Cuba as long as Castro remained in power. That made them exiles in their hearts, and in mine. That’s the way the Cuban exile community, with a few rare exceptions, views them as well. I heard from many Cuban Americans who told me the story had prompted them to research their own family histories. And it prompted me to find out everything I could about my parents’ experience. I obtained their entire immigration file, which included the background check they underwent in Cuba, their birth certificates and marriage license and other documents. In the pages of their file and old passports, my parents’ story, when they were younger than I am, came alive for me—the story of their hopes and disappointments and fears, and the dreams that are a part of their children now.

I thought the
Washington Post
story overreached. It made it sound as if my speeches and campaign ads were filled with accounts of how my parents had fled Cuba in fear of their lives as they were chased by Castro’s goons. All I had really said was that my parents were exiles who’d lost their country and made a better life for their children in America. If I had known the exact date of their immigration during the campaign, I would have made the same claim. I would have acknowledged that they came in 1956, that they had wanted to return and couldn’t. In the end, theirs is the story of exile. They had lost their country.

Of all the heightened media scrutiny I’ve experienced in my first year in the Senate, the most distressing experience didn’t involve anything I did or said. It wasn’t even about an incident in my political career, although it wouldn’t have been reported were I not a public figure.

In July 2011, Univision broadcast a story about my brother in law, Orlando’s, arrest for drug trafficking a quarter century earlier. I was in high school when he was arrested and had nothing to do with the case. Other media outlets knew about it but never reported on it because it had no bearing on my public office. No one in the Democratic Party would touch it. The story wouldn’t have any political impact. But I knew how much having their private lives broadcast to the nation would deeply hurt my family and that upset me greatly. My sister and her husband are not public figures. Simply being related to a senator doesn’t change that. They are private people who
have no role in my political career or my public service. Univision’s decision to lead their national newscast with this story about something that happened to two private people over two decades before exposed my sister to public embarrassment. And, sadly, it was also very painful for my mother who was forced to relive the anguish of that difficult time.

The scrutiny of the campaign and of my first year in office has affected me in some positive ways. I pay more careful attention to detail now. Whether it is a question I am asked or some form I need to fill out, I do everything now with an eye toward how it could be viewed, maybe out of context, in the future. For much of my political career I was very young, very busy and very inexperienced, and sometimes I was sloppy in some of my practices. The scrutiny of the last three years has changed that. But I also need to balance this concern. For in our fear of generating negative attention, we can lose the purpose of our service.