Sen. Marco Rubio sought a sweet spot with a young, conservative audience this morning by presenting himself as a candidate of the future who understands what makes America exceptional.

“Our leaders are still stuck in yesterday,” Rubio, 43, said, at a time when “we’re having a new industrial revolution every five years.”

Rubio’s remark came during a question-and-answer session with conservative commentator Sean Hannity that followed a short speech encapsulating the “new American century” theme of his book, “American Dreams,” and of his prospective campaign for president.

When Hannity asked for a one-word answer to Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, Rubio replied: “Yesterday.”

The scene was the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, where most of the likeliest Republican candidates for president have 20 minutes to make their case. The largest annual gathering of conservative activists, it concludes Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center just outside Washington in National Harbor, Md.

Rubio recalled for the friendly crowd the future his family was able to make after his father and mother left Cuba in 1956 for freedom in America.

“The fact that the son of a bartender and a maid is sitting on the stage with you today?”  he said. “That’s why America is special.”

His unrepayable debt to the “single greatest nation man has ever known,” Rubio said, is behind his own consideration of whether to seek the presidency.

“Sometimes you wouldn’t know we’re an exceptional nation by listening to the left,” Rubio said, or “by listening to the president. … [But] after all, when was the last time you heard about a boatload of American refugees landing on the shore of another country?”

“Sometimes you wouldn’t know we’re an exceptional nation by listening to the left.”-@marcorubio at #CPAC2015

Although he emphasized tax reform to spur job growth, balancing the federal budget, and repealing and replacing Obamacare, Rubio also underlined that family, not government, is “the most important organization.”

Leaders have a duty, he said, to reform education and provide choices so that young Americans from those families gain “the skills and values they’ll need to succeed in this new century.” Being trained as welders or airline mechanics is just as valid as seeking a four-year degree, he said.

Asked by Hannity what he would do to defeat the ISIS terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, Rubio said President Obama hasn’t deployed full military force because “he doesn’t want to upset Iran.”

Because ISIS, or the Islamic State, is “a radical Sunni Islamic group,” Rubio said, it needs to be defeated by other Sunnis led by regional governments such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. If they are backed up by “devastating” U.S. air support, Rubio said to applause, “you will wipe ISIS out.”

Hannity asked the Florida Republican about his admitted “mistake” in co-sponsoring a Senate-passed immigration reform bill that, had the House not rejected it, would have led to citizenship for many of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

“It’s a serious problem that has to be addressed,” Rubio insisted of the issue that put him at odds with many conservatives. But he said he learned that Americans won’t trust their leaders even with needed reform of legal immigration until “they see” the border is secure and “illegal immigration has been brought under control.”