Those “most influential” lists are of no more account, and no more consistent, than those “best cities to live in” lists. A few years back my own Tampa finished at the top of one of the most livable lists. Just months later Tampa placed 60-somethingth on another list, just below Newark, New Jersey. (The truth is somewhere in between — closer to the second in July and August.)

So on a slow news day it’s justified, though barely, to mention that Florida’s rookie U.S. Senator, Marco Rubio of Miami, is on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list. (The World!)

Rubio is an articulate conservative leader with a very bright future in the Senate, or even higher. So he likely belongs on any list of this sort. (Though I’m obliged to add here that any sensible list of the world’s most influential magazines would not include Time.) Rubio is joined on the list by other politicians: Barack O’Barnum, Mitt Romney, Miz Hillary, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Even list makers can be allowed an eccentricity or two, which is the only reason I can imagine why Ron Paul is also on the list. And there’s also some obscurity, at least for me. Rubio is on the unalphabetical list right between singer Rihanna and cartoonist Ali Ferzat, neither of whom I could pick out of a lineup.