Marco Rubio could be a great president — if he keeps up the reckless binge-spending

Three cheers for a profligate president!

Marco Rubio
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Marco Rubio has struggled with money during his life, according to an obnoxious tut-tutting New York Times profile. Among other things, he has a nice house, a nice car, and bought a "luxury speedboat" for $80,000 after he got a book advance for 10 times as much. More worrisome, he reportedly mingled personal and campaign funds in a possibly illegal way.

Insofar as Rubio may have broken campaign finance law, that's worth knowing (though whatever he's done surely pales in comparison to Jeb Bush's entire candidacy thus far). And it needs to be said that while an $80,000 boat is definitely a luxury purchase, it's not even close to a "luxury yacht" — it's more like a bass-fishing boat. But the upshot of the condescending Times piece is that Rubio's policy choices are somehow now in question. The implication goes like this: Despite giving lip service to fiscal conservatism, is Rubio actually a spendthrift who would sink America under a pile of debt?

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.