While no one could have predicted that Rubio would suffer from a hilarious flop sweat and embarrassingly intense dry mouth on national television, the slot following a president’s state of the union address is a notable graveyard of failed national ambitions; a high risk opportunity without a lot of real upside (you’ll always look less presidential than a president addressing congress and the nation).

Which leads me to ask: did Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and Bobby Jindal (himself a noted failure in the same slot) engineer Rubio’s appearance just to take him down a notch?