[

I am the Bizarro Marco Rubio

In one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes, Elaine dates a “bizarro Jerry” named Kevin who supposedly looks and acts like Jerry’s but is his exact opposite. She soon begins hanging out with Kevin and meets strikingly friendly and polite “bizzaro” versions of George (Gene), Kramer (Feldman) and Newman (Vargas) in Kevin’s eerily similar, but different, apartment.

Marco Rubio and I are like Jerry and Kevin, similar, but just slightly different (except for the running for president part). He’s 43. I’m 45. His dad emigrated from Cuba in the mid-1950's. My dad emigrated from Cuba in the late-1950's. He got a BA from the University of Florida in 1993. I got mine at the far superior Florida State University just one year earlier. He went to South Miami High School in the late 1980's, I went to a North Miami high school during the same years. He got a JD and became a politician, I got a Ph.D. in political science.

What connects us both is a uniquely distinct immigrant experience. The Miami of the 1970's and 1980's was a Cuban-American bubble. We grew up in Miami in a time before the Internet, the 24 hour news cycle, and iPods. Exposure to the world out there came through Happy Days, The Dukes of Hazzard and Monday Night Football. But for the rest of the time, the would was filtered through the adults who were listening to anti-Castro talk on Radio Mambi, plaing dominoes, and frying up tostones (fried plantains) and fritua de bacaldo (deep fried cod).

There is much to love about this world. It is one of hard work, good food and music, loud conversation and deep commitment to friends and family. It is a world I miss and one that could be mined for narrative material on a presidential campaign. The Miami we grew up in was a celebration of entrepreneurial spirit, aggressive competition and the ability to become self-made through perseverance (and a few connections and corner-cutting).

But like Jerry’s bizarro world, Cuban Miami has an opposite of itself rooted in a deep longing over the pain of forced diaspora. This would sometimes result in a wistful sadness over things lost, usually expressed with a sigh and an “ay chico.” More often, it came out in frustration over “soft-on-Cuba” policies that purportedly kept Cuba under totalitarian control. This combination sadness and frustration lended itself to an unyielding stubbornness on things political.

Almost all Miami Cuban-Americans I know (myself included) are this combination of entrepreneurialism and stubbornness. In me, it comes out in a constant need to completely rebuild my course-syllabi every semester or to launch a new research agenda every six months. This comes with a strong impulse, that I constantly struggle to check, towards the righteousness of my position in my classroom or at a faculty meeting.

I suspect that Marco Rubio has the same mix of entrepreneurial creativity and stubbornness. For the sake of two health parties, I hope he is able to channel the creative entrepreneurial elements that seep out in his policy speeches and reign in the stubbornness that we already have too much of in politics.

Although my politics tend towards the more progressive end of the spectrum, In a “bizarro” kind of way, I’m rooting for Rubio to do well. The two party system would benefit from Republican candidates that can articulate how a real emphasis on small-business development and entrepreneurialism could benefit everyone. Two parties debating how to best deal with inequality and job creation would be much better than one.