SARAH PALIN may be the Republican Party’s rock star, but Mike Huckabee can actually play the bass guitar. While campaigning for the presidency last year, he would often whip it out and start jamming. Lexington heard him a few times. He was at least as good as that other former governor of Arkansas, the one who plays the saxophone. And his latest book has more about rock music in it than the title, “A Simple Christmas”, might suggest.
As an eight-year-old boy in 1964, he watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and immediately wanted to be one of them. He put “electric guitar” on his Christmas list, but his parents picked something cheaper. After two years, he drew up a list with only the guitar on it. Alarmed by the price, his parents urged him to reconsider. No, he said, it’s a guitar or nothing. They gave in. “I didn’t know until years later…just how much money $99 was to my parents,” recalls Mr Huckabee. It took them a year to pay for it. The lesson? Christmas is about sacrifice. Several Christmases later, when he was a penniless father-to-be, he sold his precious guitars (he had two by then) to buy a washing machine.
Political memoirs aim to make money and charm voters. Mrs Palin’s recent volume is generating more cash than Mr Huckabee’s, but also more controversy: it is packed with score-settling. Mr Huckabee’s memoir, by contrast, is disguised as a book of heart-warming Christmas stories. Cynics will call it corny, but it offends no one. In this, it resembles Mr Huckabee’s weekly television show on Fox News. Like a conservative Oprah, he interviews nice people about the challenges they have overcome or the good works they are doing. This week’s show featured a football coach who cared for his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife, musicians who wrote a song for a vegetable-themed children’s movie and an appeal to put old toys in shoeboxes and send them to poor children. Asked why his show is not more strident, Mr Huckabee replies that people want to relax at the weekend.
The race for the Republican nomination in 2012 is wide open. Mrs Palin hogs the headlines, but half the country hates her, so she cannot plausibly win a general election. Mr Huckabee’s views on faith, family, abortion, gays and guns are almost indistinguishable from hers, yet hardly anyone hates him. He seems so reasonable: soft-spoken and gently humorous. “Lord give me patience,” he says, “right now!” He describes something improbable as being “as likely as someone going up to Chuck Norris and taking away his chest hair”. He does not sound intolerant. Of the tut-tutting about a certain golfer, he says: “Don’t worry about what’s happening behind the doors of Tiger’s house. Focus on what’s happening behind the doors at your house.”
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In 2000 he commuted a young burglar’s 108-year prison sentence. Last month, the man allegedly murdered four police officers. Mr Huckabee’s critics have given him hell for allowing the young man a second chance. With hindsight, he made a mistake, but what of the hundreds of other cases where he showed mercy? “Huckabee could have done the easy, politically safe thing by letting ludicrously heavy sentences stand. Instead, he opted to bring a measure of proportionality, compassion and common sense to a justice system that needs more of it,” writes Errol Louis of the New York Daily News. Few on the right earn such praise from black pundits.
At a time of Republican discord, Mr Huckabee’s voice soothes. Some within the party want to cut off support for Republican candidates who fail to tick eight out of ten boxes on a conservative purity test. Mr Huckabee thinks this is a bad idea. Americans don’t need robotic politicians with pre-determined answers, he says; they want leaders who will apply their judgment to the messy complexities of real life. A Gallup poll last month found that 71% of Republicans would consider supporting Mr Huckabee for president in 2012, putting him slightly ahead of Mitt Romney and Mrs Palin (both 65%). Among voters in general, Mr Huckabee scored roughly the same as Mr Romney (40% to 39%) and better than Mrs Palin (33%). Mr Huckabee says he has not yet decided whether he will run. But clearly he must be taken seriously.
The less cuddly side
That means paying attention not only to the warm and eloquent way he delivers his message, but also to the message itself. He thinks the climate summit in Copenhagen is a waste of time. He favours a voluntary cap-and-trade system for curbing carbon emissions, which is like arguing for a voluntary income tax. As it happens, he favours a voluntary income tax, too. Or rather, despite the rapid deterioration of the government’s finances, he would abolish income tax and ramp up consumption taxes instead. This is both regressive and likely to aggravate the deficit. He sides with Israel as wholeheartedly as he sides with America. The two nations are alike, he says: both were founded by people “escaping the galloping terror of tyranny”.
Democrats are twice as likely to disapprove of Mrs Palin as of Mr Huckabee. But this is partly because Mr Huckabee has never locked horns with a famous Democrat. As John McCain’s running-mate, it was Mrs Palin’s job to savage Barack Obama. She did so with gusto; her quip about palling around with terrorists still stings. Mr Huckabee’s jabs at Mr Obama have been less personal and less noticed, but that will change if he wins the Republican nomination. He can wield a deadly knife when he chooses to. Addressing social conservatives in September, for example, he likened Obamacare to Mr Romney’s health reforms in Massachusetts, without mentioning Mr Romney by name. “[T]he only thing inexpensive about Massachusetts’s health-care bill is that there you can get a $50 abortion,” he growled. Translation: my rival for the Republican nomination is a baby-killing socialist. Democrats should not underestimate Mike Huckabee.
As an eight-year-old boy in 1964, he watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and immediately wanted to be one of them. He put “electric guitar” on his Christmas list, but his parents picked something cheaper. After two years, he drew up a list with only the guitar on it. Alarmed by the price, his parents urged him to reconsider. No, he said, it’s a guitar or nothing. They gave in. “I didn’t know until years later…just how much money $99 was to my parents,” recalls Mr Huckabee. It took them a year to pay for it. The lesson? Christmas is about sacrifice. Several Christmases later, when he was a penniless father-to-be, he sold his precious guitars (he had two by then) to buy a washing machine.
Political memoirs aim to make money and charm voters. Mrs Palin’s recent volume is generating more cash than Mr Huckabee’s, but also more controversy: it is packed with score-settling. Mr Huckabee’s memoir, by contrast, is disguised as a book of heart-warming Christmas stories. Cynics will call it corny, but it offends no one. In this, it resembles Mr Huckabee’s weekly television show on Fox News. Like a conservative Oprah, he interviews nice people about the challenges they have overcome or the good works they are doing. This week’s show featured a football coach who cared for his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife, musicians who wrote a song for a vegetable-themed children’s movie and an appeal to put old toys in shoeboxes and send them to poor children. Asked why his show is not more strident, Mr Huckabee replies that people want to relax at the weekend.
The race for the Republican nomination in 2012 is wide open. Mrs Palin hogs the headlines, but half the country hates her, so she cannot plausibly win a general election. Mr Huckabee’s views on faith, family, abortion, gays and guns are almost indistinguishable from hers, yet hardly anyone hates him. He seems so reasonable: soft-spoken and gently humorous. “Lord give me patience,” he says, “right now!” He describes something improbable as being “as likely as someone going up to Chuck Norris and taking away his chest hair”. He does not sound intolerant. Of the tut-tutting about a certain golfer, he says: “Don’t worry about what’s happening behind the doors of Tiger’s house. Focus on what’s happening behind the doors at your house.”
Click here
In 2000 he commuted a young burglar’s 108-year prison sentence. Last month, the man allegedly murdered four police officers. Mr Huckabee’s critics have given him hell for allowing the young man a second chance. With hindsight, he made a mistake, but what of the hundreds of other cases where he showed mercy? “Huckabee could have done the easy, politically safe thing by letting ludicrously heavy sentences stand. Instead, he opted to bring a measure of proportionality, compassion and common sense to a justice system that needs more of it,” writes Errol Louis of the New York Daily News. Few on the right earn such praise from black pundits.
At a time of Republican discord, Mr Huckabee’s voice soothes. Some within the party want to cut off support for Republican candidates who fail to tick eight out of ten boxes on a conservative purity test. Mr Huckabee thinks this is a bad idea. Americans don’t need robotic politicians with pre-determined answers, he says; they want leaders who will apply their judgment to the messy complexities of real life. A Gallup poll last month found that 71% of Republicans would consider supporting Mr Huckabee for president in 2012, putting him slightly ahead of Mitt Romney and Mrs Palin (both 65%). Among voters in general, Mr Huckabee scored roughly the same as Mr Romney (40% to 39%) and better than Mrs Palin (33%). Mr Huckabee says he has not yet decided whether he will run. But clearly he must be taken seriously.
The less cuddly side
That means paying attention not only to the warm and eloquent way he delivers his message, but also to the message itself. He thinks the climate summit in Copenhagen is a waste of time. He favours a voluntary cap-and-trade system for curbing carbon emissions, which is like arguing for a voluntary income tax. As it happens, he favours a voluntary income tax, too. Or rather, despite the rapid deterioration of the government’s finances, he would abolish income tax and ramp up consumption taxes instead. This is both regressive and likely to aggravate the deficit. He sides with Israel as wholeheartedly as he sides with America. The two nations are alike, he says: both were founded by people “escaping the galloping terror of tyranny”.
Democrats are twice as likely to disapprove of Mrs Palin as of Mr Huckabee. But this is partly because Mr Huckabee has never locked horns with a famous Democrat. As John McCain’s running-mate, it was Mrs Palin’s job to savage Barack Obama. She did so with gusto; her quip about palling around with terrorists still stings. Mr Huckabee’s jabs at Mr Obama have been less personal and less noticed, but that will change if he wins the Republican nomination. He can wield a deadly knife when he chooses to. Addressing social conservatives in September, for example, he likened Obamacare to Mr Romney’s health reforms in Massachusetts, without mentioning Mr Romney by name. “[T]he only thing inexpensive about Massachusetts’s health-care bill is that there you can get a $50 abortion,” he growled. Translation: my rival for the Republican nomination is a baby-killing socialist. Democrats should not underestimate Mike Huckabee.