It is a sign of how much politics has come to resemble show business in the U.S. that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is suddenly on the charts, having placed second in the meaningless Iowa straw poll. Brian Karney has this, in the Wall Street Journal:
A week ago, Mike Huckabee was having trouble getting potential donors to return his calls. But after coming in a surprise second in the Iowa straw poll last weekend, the former Arkansas governor is on a media and fund-raising blitz. The man who greets me, with a firm handshake and a warm smile, is physically unassuming and seems slightly too small for the suit he's wearing--which he may be, having famously lost more than 100 pounds after being diagnosed with Type II diabetes a few years back.
I have taken some interest in Huckabee's campaign, if only because we're homeboys: he was born in central Arkansas, yours truly in the Northeast corner of that bastion of the Confederacy. You can see one of my posts here, which focuses on the disturbing parallels between the once and future Arkansans turned Presidential contenders. If anything, Huckabee's famous weight loss might be his most compelling qualification for the Presidency. I remember with a vague feeling of horror a picture of President Clinton in swim trunks.
It might be Huckabee's only qualification. Karney's interview is subtly devastating. Here is a sample:
One central theme of Mr. Huckabee's campaign that he hasn't mentioned yet is his support for the Fair Tax, a proposal to replace the federal income tax with a sales tax of either 23% or 30%, depending on how you count. So I ask him if he really expects the repeal of the 16th Amendment, the one that granted the federal government the authority to levy income taxes in the first place. "I hope we would [repeal it]. That's the whole point." But hope, of course, is not a plan. Does he have one? "I'd go directly to the people, sell it to them, and then ask them to sell it to Congress."
It goes on at some length: vast proposals tottering on half-vast thinking. But of course Presidential campaigns are not fought or won on concrete proposals. They turn on the "vision thing," as Bush 41 called it: contrasting packages of images and rhetorical flourishes. We punch the chad out for the candidate who gives us the most attractive impression of who he is and what the country ought to be or do.
Huckabee's offering so far is a standard image straddle. On the one hand, he is the real thing for Republicans:
"If the Republicans have a chance next year," Mr. Huckabee says, "the criteria are:
No. 1, someone who can communicate our message to the people of our country and win them back, because we've lost a lot of them.
"No. 2, it's someone who has consistency on the principles and the core values that have caused people to be Republican. That includes the sanctity of life, it includes fiscal conservativism. It certainly includes an adherence to the traditional concept of marriage. It means respect for the Second Amendment. Those are issues that caused a lot of middle America and the South to go Republican."
But if he is the true conservative, he is no ideologue:
"We have to show that we are also problem-solvers, not just ideologues. People are not going to tolerate a government that just is led by people who just believe something. They want a government that is led by people who can do something. And all the beliefs in the world don't change the dynamics if we're unable to function and function effectively."
That, as Mark Twain said of Wagner's music, "is not as bad as it sounds." It is a plausible recipe for winning the nomination, and then winning the election. His strategy is the same as Bill Clinton's when he began his run in the early 90's: hope that the big boys take themselves out, and then emerge as the best second-tier choice.
But it's probably too late for that. It is unlikely that Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, and Romney will all collapse. And unlike Bill Clinton, Huckabee has no national image to bank on. Besides, he's from Arkansas. Are we really going to try that again? Ms. Clinton knew better than to try it.
Recent Comments