Marco Rubio came third in Iowa last night. He didn’t win. He didn’t almost win. He came third, just behind Donald Trump. He is not a “cinch” for the nomination. He has not “proven his critics wrong.” He has put himself in a better position that he would have been in if he had failed to break twenty percent, and done nothing more. The road ahead of him is a long one.


This being so, one has to wonder why Rubio is one of the main stories today? Sure, he outperformed expectations, and that always helps in politics. But he didn’t crush expectations. He came third — and, crucially, the two guys ahead of him together got more than 50 percent of the vote.

So why the hype? The answer, at least in part, is that he spun his finish better than anybody else spun theirs. Ted Cruz won the night — and well — but his victory speech was a meandering, self-indulgent mess that went on for so long that Fox had to cut away. Donald Trump, meanwhile, seemed genuinely morose and utterly unsure as to what he should do (how strange the change from major to minor . . .). Rubio, by contrast, pounced. He was the first out in front of the cameras, and he immediately played the-they said-this-couldn’t-happen card, which made him seem like the winner; he was brief, which gave the networks time to talk about him; and he made sure to ignore the Trump show and give what was essentially a general election pitch. In truth, Rubio won nothing much last night. But in politics perception can affect reality, and Rubio played his moment to perfection.