Pausing in the middle of his presentation, Sen. Rubio reached for a bottle of water and took a quick drink before resuming his comments:
A nothing moment, right? Wrong. The Senator's gulp--some would say gaffe--went viral on the Internet, prompting jokes and parodies and largely overshadowing the substance of his comments. Witness the following:
This isn't the first time, of course, that an elected official's unscripted moment has become fodder for the press. When President George W. Bush briefly lost consciousness after choking on a pretzel in 2002, for example, the incident was widely reported and became the subject of comedians' jokes. Senator Howard Dean's "primal scream" along the 2006 campaign trail also became big news, his boisterous performance broadcast so widely that Dean's Presidential aspirations were virtually dashed. It would seem that just about everyone in the public spotlight has at least one of these episodes; perhaps it comes with the territory.
But I'm struck by the extent to which Rubio's H20 "break" appears to have obscured his response to the President's State of the Union speech. You can find plenty of people who know that the Senator abruptly interrupted his comments to take a swig of water. But how many can you find who remember what he actually said?
That's a less-than-desirable consequence, I think, of an environment where "cheap thrills" rule. It's hard to say who's more at fault here--the media that picks up on leaders' every slip-up or a public that's perpetually hungry for a laugh, no matter how inane or inconsequential the source of the guffaws.
I'm no fan of Marco Rubio or the larger Republican message, but in the interest of promoting a serious conversation about the direction of the country, the news media would be wise to focus more on our leaders' messages than their missteps. And the rest of us would be smart to stop giggling like schoolkids over every little thing and pay more attention to the big picture, scary as it may sometimes be.
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