Of the tens of thousands of words filling the 212 pages in Sen. Marco Rubio’s new book, there’s two words you won’t find anywhere: Ron DeSantis.
Despite copious mentions of Donald Trump and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle—along with esoteric name-drops ranging from New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie to the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida—DeSantis, the governor of Rubio’s home state, fails to earn a single mention.
Even when topics right in the DeSantis wheelhouse appear, such as Disney or critical race theory—Rubio mentions the sociological and legal concept no fewer than eight times—the Florida governor is nowhere to be found in Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America's Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity.
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The relationship between Rubio and DeSantis remains a mystery, according to nearly a dozen Republicans who’ve worked with the Florida Republican stars. Many of these sources told The Daily Beast they couldn’t think of a single substantive encounter between the two men beyond joint appearances following natural disasters such as Hurricane Dorian in 2019, where they sat next to each other on a flight to visit damage in the Bahamas.
“I know literally nothing about any relationship or lack thereof concerning DeSantis and Rubio,” a Florida Republican close with DeSantis told The Daily Beast. “I don’t think it is something on anyone’s radar.”
A GOP strategist also had questions over whether DeSantis’ lack of a relationship with a key Florida lawmaker is the exception, not the rule.
“I just don’t know anybody he has a close relationship with who’s an elected official in this state,” the strategist said. “It’s just really bad politics when you’re not close with your home state delegation.”
While DeSantis’ rocky relationship with Florida Sen. Rick Scott is more well-documented, DeSantis and Rubio are an odd fit in the Trump era. Both have tried similar tactics to present themselves as populist outsiders without the mercurial behavior and reputational baggage of Trump. Much like DeSantis up to this point in the 2024 cycle, Rubio tried using subtle contrasts to combat Trump in the 2016 GOP primary only to eventually succumb to Trump’s gutter tactics in the infamous viral moment where Rubio questioned the size of the former president’s penis, cementing his Trumpian nickname “Little Marco.”
Rubio and DeSantis briefly crossed paths thanks to Trump. Rubio bowed out of the presidential race to stick with seeking re-election to his Senate seat, leading then-Rep. DeSantis to drop his Senate bid and pursue his own re-election in the House.
“I think Ron was annoyed when Rubio got back in that Senate race, that’s maybe the most reasonable explanation for any lingering beef,” the GOP strategist said.
Rubio and Governor DeSantis en route to the Bahamas.
Office of Senator Marco RubioDeSantis’ gubernatorial wins in 2018 and 2022 also marked a changing of the guard in Florida.
“DeSantis has kind of ascended beyond him right now and he’s the big Florida hope, where eight years ago it was whether it was gonna be Jeb or Marco,” a longtime Florida pollster, Brad Coker of Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, told The Daily Beast. “Jeb has almost completely gone away since then, where Marco has really focused on the Senate.”
Rubio’s book deals with lofty topics, emulating his evolution from Florida’s golden boy to a statesman more attuned to foreign policy, as the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Slowly, in the boardrooms of think tanks and the classrooms of Ivy League universities, a consensus emerged: history, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, was over, and the only thing left to do was spread liberalism—and with it the hallmarks of globalized American economics and progressive values—to every corner of the world,” Rubio writes while laying out the central thesis of the book.
Rubio aims to show off his academic prowess with an argument that postmodern philosophy and the advent of deconstruction—the signature work of Derrida, whose basic assertion was that language has no absolute meaning but instead relies on the contrast between words—somehow contributed to the “decadent” economic and cultural malaise the nation finds itself in.
The title itself, Decades of Decadence, is an homage to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and his 2020 book The Decadent Society, which he defines as “economic stagnation, institutional sclerosis, and cultural repetition at a high stage of wealth and technological proficiency and civilizational development.”
Clearly an avid New York Times reader, Rubio also dedicates a passage to Douthat’s opinion desk colleague Bouie—whom Rubio dings as “currently a New York Times opinion columnist but at the time [2012] the chief political correspondent for a mediocre ruling-class website called Slate”—to dismiss the writer’s thesis that “white fragility” and a racist backlash to the election of President Barack Obama were a driving force behind Trump’s ascension to power. (Notably, Bouie has written on the limits of white fragility as an inadequate concept when it comes to economic inequality).
Although picking a side in the 2024 proxy war between Trump and DeSantis is not of interest to Rubio in the book, he does mention the former president on nine occasions.
“He’s not making decisions based on what Ron DeSantis will do,” Coker said of Rubio. “He’s got no dog in the fight, and he’ll just see how it plays out.”
“There’s something to be said for not saying something about anybody,” Coker continued, but given Rubio’s role working with the Trump administration, “you also can’t not say anything about Trump.”
Still, there’s a hint of presidential ambition in the Rubio book, coming right after he gives a shoutout to Douthat in the introduction and later when he draws on his biography as the child of Cuban immigrants. Rubio positions himself as uniquely equipped to tackle the trickier problems in a decadent society, particularly how “external threats to our way of life that survived the Cold War are still very much with us.”
“Thanks to my upbringing,” Rubio writes, “I knew that better than most of my peers.”
Even though Rubio is just eight years older than DeSantis, Coker said the dynamic in Florida has bumped the senator from his once highly coveted status as a rising star within the Republican Party.
“One was the rising star, and now DeSantis is the rising star,” Coker said. “Rubio’s not exactly a rookie anymore. He just got elected to a third term. He’s not the 30-year-old hotshot that he was when he decided to challenge Charlie Crist.”
