THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE — More than 30 years ago, the author Richard Ben Cramer delivered a masterpiece of political reporting that remains relevant to this day. Titled What It Takes, the book featured deeply reported character studies of a handful of White House hopefuls; it continues to color the work of a generation of political reporters. One of the candidates he chronicled, Joe Biden, is now president. Boiled down to its essence, Cramer’s thousand-page tome posed a timeless question: what makes these people tick? And what was the personal cost of their pursuit of the presidency? This weekend, we may have caught a glimpse. It began with Donald Trump’s attack on Republican rival Nikki Haley’s family Saturday, when the former president ridiculed the whereabouts of her husband, Maj. Michael Haley, a National Guard officer now deployed overseas. In a speech at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, Trump suggested his absence from the campaign trail might have motivations other than service to his country. “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband?” Trump said as he campaigned in the state in advance of the Feb. 24 primary. Trump’s slash-and-burn style is by now so familiar that the remark hardly came as a shock. What was surprising, however, was the relative silence that greeted it, perhaps most notably the shrugged-shoulders approach of GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, a former presidential candidate himself. He declined an opportunity Sunday to condemn the comments, or call them out in any way. “I think they’re part of the increasing nastiness of this campaign and every campaign in American politics,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s just part of these campaign cycles,” he added, noting that he refused to respond to every comment Trump makes. It’s a common frustration among GOP officeholders, who don’t feel they should be held accountable for — or be forced to comment on — Trump’s regular provocations. In this case, however, there is a backstory tying Rubio and Haley together that makes the incident all the more remarkable. And it raises the kinds of questions Cramer sought to answer in his book. Back in 2016, as South Carolina governor, Haley delivered a crucial endorsement to Rubio before her state’s primary — a coup for the Florida senator at the time. Haley was effusive in her praise of Rubio; as a piece of political theater, it was a hit. The endorsement event lacked a transactional feel. The pair seemed to project warmth and genuine high regard for each other. “I’m a military wife of a combat veteran. I want a president who is going to have the backs of military veterans and those on active duty,” Haley said at the rally. “I want a president who understands they have to go back to Washington, D.C., and bring a conscience back to our Republicans.” Haley, Rubio said after receiving her endorsement, “embodies for me everything that I want the Republican Party and the conservative movement to be about.” He later told reporters that Haley “exemplifies what I want the Republican Party to be known for in the 21st century — vibrant, reform-oriented, optimistic, upwardly mobile.” Haley and her husband weren’t just abstract political characters. Michael Haley himself was present at the endorsement event. The then-governor later posted a photo on Facebook of herself, her husband and their two children with Rubio in front of a Rubio campaign sign. “Michael and I ask you to vote Marco Rubio for President,” Haley wrote on Facebook on primary election day. Eight years later, however, Rubio endorsed Trump over Haley, despite once describing Trump as “a con artist” who “has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy.” And Rubio did so the day before the first votes were cast in the Iowa caucuses. Now he’s declined to draw a line and call out the attack on Haley’s family. Politics is a tough business. Alliances shift. Unpleasant compromises must be made. There is no obligation to return the favor of an endorsement. In that context, backing a former rival is politically defensible, even if it came at an inopportune time for Haley. For Rubio to maintain his viability within a Trump-dominated party now and beyond, concessions need to be made. Refusing to take a stand on the attack on Haley and her husband, however, is a concession of a different kind. It’s an episode that Cramer, who obsessively sought to understand the motivations of those who sought high office, would have made into high art. As it turns out, the author may have foreshadowed it in the forward to What It Takes. “What happened to their idea of themselves?” he wrote. “What did we do to them, on the way to the White House?” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie.
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