“This biography of Bart came out awfully quickly. It’s not even about him.” – Lisa Simpson
Here at Tethered Swimming we’re going to examine the Republican presidential candidates and how they might fare in a general election that appears to be stacked against any Republican nominee. Today we’re looking at Mike Huckabee and the also rans, Wednesday will be John McCain and Fred Thompson, and next Sunday will be Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.
Let’s dispense with the truly unelectable first, shall we? First up is Duncan Hunter. He’s a congressman from California and has about as much of a chance at winning the nomination as I do. The Core Principals listed on his campaign website tell you pretty much everything you need to know, it starts with abortion (though the heading is “Life”) and moves on from there to the usual laundry list of right wing bogyman problems from gay marriage (he’s against it) to the National Endowment for the Arts (remember that one?). He is as right wing as right wing gets and if he did win the nomination his right wing credentials as a culture warrior would doom against any Democratic nominee save perhaps Michael Moore.
Next comes Tom Tancredo, who is to immigration what Hunter is to abortion. He’s convinced that America is under siege by brown people. He won’t quite put it in those terms, but he’s not exactly going out of his way to be subtle about it either. If you’re looking for a little Republican candidate humor though, check out his store. He’s only got two items for sale, a t-shirt and a bumper sticker that will let the world know that you’re against amnesty for illegal immigrants. To place your order you need to copy text from the product page and then paste it into the order page. I’m not kidding, check out the link. It’s the kind of awkward, first-draft attempt at on-line commerce that I haven’t seen live since about 1999. Seeing this page my brain instantly conjured an image of him, sitting in his well appointed office, questioning some aide forty years his junior about the website, but doing so in terms that let you know that he has no idea what he’s talking about. Something like, “How many web clickers did the portal traffic today?” Anyway, if he did win the nomination he’d lose Goldwater style because, and I don’t know if anyone’s told him this yet, brown people vote.
This brings us to Mike Huckabee. He has done exceptionally well for a man with little to no national exposure prior to running for President. He did well at the Iowa straw poll which garnered him some media attention, which got him creeping up in the polls, which now have him in second place in Iowa for the caucus. In short, he’s beginning to benefit from the media feedback loop that keeps top tier candidates top tier and also ran candidates also rans. You can argue that he broke into that loop with a strong campaign and smart strategy, or you can argue that he got sucked in because each of the four big name candidates have some warts and voters were dissatisfied. Either way, he’s got to be taken seriously.
So, how could Huckabee prevail in the general election? The answer is pretty simple: pull a George W. Bush. He’s a similar candidate to the on Bush was back in 2000, conservative, religious, Washington outsider, etc. Huckabee could, in theory, make an attempt to reassemble Bush’s electoral alliance of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and people scared of terrorism.
He’s immune to charges of moral laxity, he’s a minister who has only ever had one wife; plus he doesn’t like gay marriage and isn’t shy about saying so. He’s not a darling of the Club for Growth, he did raise taxes to pay for schools in Arkansas, but this is on his campaign webpage, “I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And do I mean all – personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment.” He proposes a consumption tax that exempts basic necessities. I don’t know enough about tax policy to know if that actually makes any sense, my hunch is that it doesn’t, but whether it’s a decent plan or pie in the sky doesn’t really matter. On the campaign trail it can be presented as lowering taxes, which is all anyone really cares about. For people scared of terrorism he can’t offer much in the way of practical experience, but he can run as a macho Republican who will enthusiastically read all of the comforting B-movie lines that pass for foreign policy discourse these days.
The man who invented our hack screenwriter foreign policy, George W. Bush, isn’t as much of a liability for Huckabee as he is for candidates who’ve spent more time in and around D.C. Huckabee can present himself as a continuation of the good policies of Bush the Younger, but in a more responsible package. He’s got the good parts of Bush the Younger’s biography: he’s affable and down to earth but he’s still comfortable being religious; he’s on his first wife and hasn’t been caught with, or rumored to be with, anyone else; he’s a tax cutting, pro-life Southern governor. But he doesn’t have any of the ugly parts of the Bush bio: he wasn’t a spoiled rich kid; he didn’t use his father’s connections to avoid military service (he was only 17 when the Vietnam War ended); he isn’t dumb and got through college with his brain not his checkbook. In short, if anyone can garner the support of people who still support our current president without reminding anyone else of him too much, Huckabee can.
Then there’s the Iraq War, about which Huckabee has said almost nothing beyond the standard Republican template: victory not withdrawal, our troops are great and look how much I support them (and the vets), blah blah blah. He would (hopefully) have to say something a bit more substantive in the general election, but maybe not. If he can convince people that he’s the right commander, which is to say that he’s a competent man who can handle a tough, but doable, job, he might not need a secret plan to end the war. As we saw with the lionization of General Petraeus this summer, there are still a lot of people in this country who want to believe that we can win so badly that they’ll convince themselves that with a change at the top a doomed enterprise can be salvaged.
Finally we come to Mike Huckabee, the man. His claim to fame is that he was diagnosed with Type II diabetes and promptly shed over 100 pounds, making himself into a paragon of healthy virtue. If you’re trying to relate to the average American in 2008, weight loss is certainly a decent place to start. And he’s not one of those despicable thin people who can eat and not pork up. No, he was fat (just like you and me) and he lost the weight (just like you and me want to). That’s an easy story to tell.
The problem with all of this is that unlike his four more famous competitors, Huckabee has not spent a great deal of time under a national media microscope. He’s still small time and the proof is in the innumerable little financial flaps he’s had to endure. If this Salon piece and many of the links it contains are anything to go by there are a lot of poorly examined incidents in his record. Any one of them could turn into a major embarrassment when exposed to the full light of the national media.
Mike Huckabee could win, he’s got the background to become a credible candidate and the Republicans could certainly do worse (see: Hunter, Duncan and Tancredo, Tom). It would be an uphill battle, but Huckabee could position himself as George W. Bush 2.0, with none of the drawbacks and all of the advantages. It probably wouldn’t work, but if George W. Bush proved anything it’s that you can win the presidency by running on character as a character. If Huckabee wins the nomination, that’s what he’ll need to do.
