One of the principal benefits of Mike Huckabee’s campaign is that he’s managed to reach the top tier of the Republican field with almost no scrutiny at all. The media has largely treated him as an afterthought, giving the bigger-name candidates more attention; and the bigger-name candidates have been directing more of their energies into taking on one another. All of a sudden, a tortoise seems to have snuck up on the whole gang.
But, there’s a downside to this. Now that the race has reached crunch time, and Huckabee is a credible challenger for the nomination, all of the scrutiny comes at once. The media has to play catch-up, and start putting the guy through his paces, and the rest of the GOP field has to redirect their focus to the new guy who’s had it too easy.
The question, then, is how Huckabee responds to the pressure, and handles unpleasant questions. So far, I think he’s struggling pretty badly.
This week, for example, Huckabee was asked for his thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, arguably the biggest foreign policy news in months, if not the year. Huckabee said he’d never heard of it. This morning, on MSNBC, he tried to rationalize his ignorance.
“Well, I don’t blame my staff. It is a situation where a report was released at 10:00 in the morning, the president hadn’t seen it in four years and I’m supposed to see it four hours later.”
That’s utter nonsense, and actually makes Huckabee look even dumber. (Indeed, Huckabee went on to describe the NIE question as a “gotcha question.” Got that? If a reporter asks a leading presidential candidate about a massive intelligence report about nuclear weapons and a leading U.S. foe, it’s a “gotcha question.” By that standard, isn’t every question a gotcha question?)
This “four hours” line is particularly inane. As Kevin explained, “The NIE was released Monday morning. He was asked about it Tuesday evening. That’s two days. Two days in which the NIE was on the front page of every newspaper; it was blanketing cable TV, talk radio, and the blogosphere; and the president of the United States addressed its conclusions in a press conference. It was blockbuster news on one of the most important foreign policy issues of the campaign and Huckabee didn’t even know about it.”
That’s true, but I’d take this even further.
Looking back at the original report, the journalist who asked the NIE question explained what Huckabee would have seen if he were following current events. In response, the former governor said:
This is not only incoherent, more importantly, it suggests that Huckabee doesn’t know what a National Intelligence Estimate even is.
Of course, this is only one of a few fires Huckabee is trying to put out. The even bigger political crisis involves Huckabee’s role in freeing Wayne Dumond, a violent felon who went on to kill and rape again. This morning, our simple friend tried to blame Bill Clinton. Shortly thereafter, he lashed out at the source of the latest details.
“Let’s first of all look at the source. The Huffington Post, one of the most left-wing blogs in the blogosphere, There are factual errors in what they have printed. Some of it is outrageously incorrect…”
First, Huffington is not one of the most left-wing blogs in the blogosphere. Second, the Huffington piece is based on actual documents obtained from Arkansas, written up by an experienced veteran jouranlist. And third, if there are “factual errors,” they must be pretty hard to find because Huckabee can’t identify a single one.
The phrase “not ready for prime-time” was practically custom made for a guy like this.