Whatever is less that zero respect, that is what I have for Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, but at least in one respect I am willing to be more generous than my colleague Ed Kilgore. I’m willing to be more generous because there are some areas where I am willing to grant people the limited right to selfishly emphasize their narrow self-interest rather than the bigger picture.

What I am talking about here is how Sen. Rubio responded when asked why Cuba should still suffer under sanctions and isolation when other countries like Vietnam, China, and Saudi Arabia do not. Rubio made a point that struck Kilgore as absurd but that I thought made perfect sense.

On ABC, George Stephanopoulos reminded Rubio that the United States already has diplomatic relations “with all kinds of countries that don’t meet our democratic standards.” So why isolate Cuba? The senator replied:
“That’s exactly my point. We have those policies of normalization toward Vietnam, for example, toward China.

They’re not any more politically free today than they were when that normalization happened. They may have a bigger economy, but their political freedoms, certainly I would not hold up China or Saudi Arabia or Vietnam as examples of political freedom, proving my point – that engagement by itself does not guarantee or even lead to political freedoms.”

If what you care about is primarily the political freedom of the Cuban people, then relaxing the formal opposition to the government there probably feels like taking away the one tool in the toolbox that might accomplish your goal. It’s true that we can look back at over 50 years of futility for this policy, but in the context in which Rubio is speaking, it’s also the case that hopes of true democracy arising in, for example, China, simply have not materialized.

There are many arguments that can be advanced to challenge Rubio’s position. If something hasn’t worked for a very long time, why not try something different? Why punish the Cuban people economically if there isn’t any political or human rights pay off?

But from the vantage point of wanting political freedom, the change in policy is not guaranteed to work, and we can cite similar examples where it hasn’t worked.

And, this is the crucial point, if it doesn’t work then what do have you left to work with?

So, to review, the context of the question that Rubio was asked was why should we have one standard for repressive regimes in Asia or the Middle East and another standard for Cuba?

And the answer is basically that Rubio cares a lot more about the human rights of Cubans than he cares about the human rights of the Vietnamese, the Chinese, or the people living in Saudi Arabia.

There is a sense in which this is distasteful because people are people no matter where they live and human rights are universal, but I don’t think it is a big sin for Irish-Americans to care more about what goes on in Ireland than what goes on in China.

What should be clear, though, is that U.S. policy cannot be determined by what one ethnicity cares about. Rubio can have a double standard, but the president cannot be bound by that.

The change in policy may or may not advance human rights in Cuba, but it’s worth a try considering that what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked.