One by one, prominent media figures, who’ve apparently grown weary of the top-tier Republican presidential candidates, are lining up to sing Mike Huckabee’s praises. David Broder boasts on national television of being “a Huckabee fan.” David Brooks wrote a gushing love letter to the former governor last week. And now Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, whom I usually like, is feeling the Huck-mentum.
After explaining why the rest of the GOP field either doesn’t deserve, or can’t win, the presidency, Alter praises Huckabee because he “speaks American.” The Arkansan, Alter argues, “comes across more hopeful than Giuliani, more believable than Romney, more intelligent than Thompson and fresher than McCain.”
On one of the more contentious parts of Huckabee’s background, Alter gives the candidate a pass.
Even on faith and politics, Mike is easy to like. From afar he seemed extreme because he raised his hand in a debate when the candidates were asked en masse if they believed in intelligent design. But when Bill Maher pressed him to justify that view on his HBO show, Huckabee responded with a nuanced and presentable discussion of the origins of the universe that seemed to pacify even the atheist host. (I found this as well when we discussed the subject some months ago.) He has surely said some wacky right-wing things that could be used against him, but no more than any of the others in the Republican field.
I think Alter’s off-base on Huckabee in general, but this seems particularly mistaken.
First, Huckabee’s history of “wacky right-wing things” shouldn’t be dismissed quite so easily.
As recently as 1998, while governor, Huckabee told a Southern Baptist pastors’ conference, “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.” More recently — just in the last few weeks — Huckabee compared safe-sex programs to drunk driving, and said he’s “reluctant” to support programs that promote condom use in combating AIDS in Africa.
“Wacky” just doesn’t seem to cut it as an adjective.
As for modern biology, Alter’s description gets the facts wrong. Huckabee didn’t raise his hand in support of “intelligent-design” creationism — the question in the debate was over who rejected evolution. That’s when Huckabee raised his hand. After the debate, he added that doesn’t believe people “came from apes.”
He later “clarified” the issue while talking to Bill Maher, but it’s not clear why Alter found this persuasive.
[B]y the time Huckabee appeared on Bill Maher’s show in August, he had that more “nuanced” view on evolution. “It’s not a proper yes-or-no question,” he said. “Do I believe that it is all about just random selection, that it just happened without any design, designer, anybody behind it? No I don’t believe that, I think there was a God behind that.”
When Maher asked Huckabee if he believed that man came from monkeys, he said: “I don’t know.”
I’m not quite sure why the media has all of a sudden decided to swoon; it probably has something to do with the fact that the most competitive Republican candidates are pretty awful. But let’s not forget that Huckabee isn’t quite the moderate every-man his fans are making him out to be.