Maybe you should quit

Marco Rubio thinks his job sucks:

“I don’t know that ‘hate’ is the right word,” Rubio said in an interview. “I’m frustrated.”

This year, as Rubio runs for president, he has cast the Senate — the very place that cemented him as a national politician — as a place he’s given up on, after less than one term. It’s too slow. Too rule-bound. So Rubio, 44, has decided not to run for his seat again. It’s the White House or bust.

“That’s why I’m missing votes. Because I am leaving the Senate. I am not running for reelection,” Rubio said in the last Republican debate, after Donald Trump had mocked him for his unusual number of absences during Senate votes.

Hey, I get it; lots of people hate their jobs. Of course, most of those people who hate their jobs are still stuck doing them anyway, and doing them well, because they need the paycheck. Marco Rubio is employed by an outfit that collectively hasn’t done much of anything, and even by that body’s half-assed standards he’s doing a half-assed job. He doesn’t need the job because he’ll be able to live quite well on book royalties, speaking fees, and lobbying moolah for the rest of his life, and that’s assuming he’s not elected President next November. So, you know, instead of bilking the taxpayers to the tune of $174K per year, if Rubio’s going to quit anyway and he’s not really doing the job now, why doesn’t he just quit now?

Rubio defends his decision to stop doing his Senate job on the grounds that he can’t get anything done in the Senate and so running for president is more important, and that’s fine, but then quit. Nothing in that defense is a justification for continuing to take a paycheck for a job that you clearly have no interest in actually doing anymore, and that you haven’t really been doing for a couple of years now. Hell, even Sarah Palin was generous enough to stop stealing a paycheck from Alaskan taxpayers after she’d clearly decided to check out of her governor gig, you betcha.

I guess this Senate-bashing will play with the tea party types, but I’m not sure it’s really the image Rubio wants to convey to the rest of the country. Here’s a guy pulling in six figures who can’t be bothered to show up for his job because it’s SOOO BOORING and he’s got better things to do, but he’ll keep collecting his paycheck anyway and suffer precisely no penalty. I realize that senators who run for president basically stop being senators for a while yet keep getting paid anyway, but that’s the kind of thing you try not to talk about publicly and that, when somebody tries to make a fuss about it, you regretfully chalk up to the overwhelming demands of the campaign and your inability to be in two places at once. Rubio has instead decided to wear his well-paid dereliction of duty like a badge of honor.

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