For secretary of state, Rubio is a standout among Trump’s unqualified cabinet picks | Opinion

Marco Rubio is considered a sure thing for secretary of state. His hearing Wednesday on the nomination to become the United States’ chief diplomat should be swift, and rightly so: He’s fully qualified for the job, with the kind of credentials we wish we were seeing in many of President-elect Donald Trump’s other cabinet and staff nominations.

The U.S. senator from Miami has extensive foreign policy experience that has prepared him well for this new role. His roots, though, are local. From his start as a West Miami city commissioner and then a state legislator and Florida House speaker, Rubio was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010. He took on an unofficial role during Trump’s first term, advising the president on foreign policy, particularly on Venezuela and Cuba. For years, he has been warning about the dangers of China, and the need for the U.S. to be more aggressive, a view broadly shared by Trump.

He’s a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he’s the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, where he has been privy to some of the most sensitive secrets of U.S. intelligence. In a positive sign, he has been receptive to working across party lines — and Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Democrat, called him a “strong voice for American interests around the globe.”

He’ll likely need every bit of that strength. Trump, before even taking office, has started stirring the pot on foreign policy issues. Threats to take back the Panama Canal and buy Greenland have made headlines, no doubt a preview of the sort of thing we can expect in his second term. Then there’s Russia, and Trump’s seeming affinity for Vladimir Putin. Rubio was among those who pushed back hard when Trump tried to cast doubt on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

And there are other foreign policy fires burning that Rubio, 53, may have to face quickly. Among them: reports that Trump is under pressure to consider a deal with Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro — whose inauguration last week to a third term as president wasn’t recognized legitimate by the U.S. — to relax U.S. oil sanctions in exchange for stopping illegal migration to the United States. A hard-liner like Rubio would likely oppose that sort of deal.

The State Department itself has been something of a Trump target, too. He has indicated that he sees it as being filled with career diplomats who resist his foreign policy agenda. Will that continue with Rubio, his handpicked secretary, in charge? Or will Rubio now have to absorb those attacks?

Fortunately, the old bad blood between Trump and Rubio, when they were both running for president in the 2016 election, seems to have largely been resolved. Trump prevailed and the two men have long been able to work together, but those repeated insults that we all witnessed during the debates — Trump calling Rubio “little,” Rubio calling Trump a “con artist” — are hard to forget.

Rubio also will have to contend with a president who forges his own path on foreign policy and disregards norms. That won’t be easy and Rubio will be fighting for influence in Trump’s White House. Already Trump has said he’ll add Richard Grenell, a foreign policy adviser and former ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term, as “presidential envoy for special missions.” That could mean just about anything — and bring Grenell onto Rubio’s turf.

Rubio, no doubt, is approaching this position with eyes wide open. He’s had plenty of time to see how Trump handles foreign policy — and everything else. Even if, as a Politico columnist prognosticated this week, Rubio “isn’t likely to last long” in the job, he’s had ample opportunity to understand what he’ll be tackling, both abroad and from the White House.

Many of Trump’s nominees are problematic or worse. Rubio, on the other hand, is a completely reasonable — and safer — choice. With so much at stake around the world, reasonable and safe sound good to us.

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This story was originally published January 14, 2025 at 6:46 PM.