The race was down to Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, and the only question
remaining was "Will Rudy's national strategy or Romney's early state
strategy be victorious?" Fred Thompson, who was supposed to be a saving
figure for conservatives turned out to be one of the worst campaigners in
recent memory. John McCain consistently underperformed and although Ron
Paul was raising a lot of money, there was no meaningful appreciation in his
polling numbers. The other candidates, Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Mike
Huckabee were no doubt going to be consigned to history as "also rans," a
mere footnote (if they were even that lucky) in the brief page that will be
written about the 2008 election.
What explains the pundits turning out so incredibly wrong? (They were also
wrong, by the way, about Hillary's coronation as the Democratic nominee, but
perhaps we shall save that story for another day.) First, they are the
pundits, and they are almost invariably wrong in their prognostications.
These spurious oracles have made a business in political prophecy that is so
vacuous and arbitrary that some people actually buy into it (for some
reason, that sort of clarity where clarity is an absurdity is alluring to
many people...look at how many people read the "Left Behind" series after
all). The entire business of political consultancy has been in pitching
false panaceas. It makes for great business--but not good campaigns.
Fortunately for Mike Huckabee, he's never been one to believe in the Old CW
(Conventional Wisdom). It was of course the CW that the country was not
interested in electing another Governor of Arkansas to the White House. It
was the Old CW that it is impossible to win the Republican nomination
without having the most money (after all, the empirical data since the
beginning of the Iowa Caucus/New Hampshire Primary first in country
tradition proves up that the winner of the Republican nomination is directly
correlative to the largest fundraiser). It was the Old CW that the country
had no interest in electing a Southern Baptist Minister to the White House.
The list goes on. Now it may be the case, at the end of the day next
November, that the country doesn't want a Southern Baptist Minister and
Arkansas Governor as President--but the Conventional Wisdom crowd has at
least been wrong that such a person doesn't have a chance.
Yet, it was also the Old Convention Wisdom in Arkansas that Republicans
simply couldn't win statewide election, that running against long-time
incumbent Senator Dale Bumpers was political suicide, and that even a
Republican who happened his way into the Governor's mansion couldn't
possibly get re-elected. But Mike Huckabee turned his massive defeat by
Dale Bumpers into a platform to run for Lieutenant Governor (a virtually
meaningless position in Arkansas that should likely be eliminated), and the
stunned the state when he performed as a brilliant and articulate statesman
in the wake of the conviction of former Governor Jim Guy Tucker in the
Whitewater investigation. Huckabee went on to become the second longest
serving governor in Arkansas's history (right after Bill Clinton), and the
only Republican ever to be twice re-elected to the office.
The Old Convention Wisdom is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you believe in
it, it will come true. Mike Huckabee has at least escaped its dominance by
simply not believing it. (By the way, so has Barack Obama.)
There have been many comparisons and contrasts in the news media in the past
few weeks. I tend to eschew most comparisons, since there are so few
comparable politicians. They are all unique. There is no more such a thing
as "Another Reagan" as there is "Another Unicorn." In the last few days, I
have seen Huckabee compared to Howard Dean (rise from obscurity to leading
in the polls only to self-destruct because he is untested and unready for
national politics), Bill Clinton (folksy but articulate underdog from Hope,
Arkansas for whom the stars are now similarly aligning), Ronald Reagan
(diamond in the rough who everybody discounts in the general election), and
George McGovern (an extremist ideologue who will be slaughtered in the
general election no matter who the other party's nominee is).
The obvious problem with all of these comparisons is that the pundits and
commentators take what is convenient for their argument and pull out the
similarities and craft a usually well-reasoned article that makes sense upon
a cursory glance. Unfortunately, these comparisons ignore the thousands of
nuances, both in the personalities of these people, but also (and perhaps
far more importantly) the nuances of the circumstances surrounding the times
and places that each of these people entered the political scene.
Mike Huckabee is not, at least in any meaningful way, like any of the people
previously described. He is a bass guitar-playing former Southern Baptist
Minister who is witty, shoots from the hip, and has a rather impressive
record as Governor of Arkansas and head of the National Governors
Association. He has many liabilities, though, that cannot be discounted.
His religious views are outside of the mainstream of the American public: he
believes in the literal inerrancy of the Bible, he does not believe in
evolution (even, it seems, theistically guided evolution). He can sometimes
be a bit too preachy about public health issues. He is known for having
thin skin with respect to the media and his critics, and he doesn't have a a
whit of foreign policy experience. But all of the candidates have either
similar or analogous liabilities.
For example, Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Rudy Giuliani is thrice married,
Barack Obama is an African American with an unfortunately Muslim-sounding
name, Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton, and so on.
The trouble with the pundits and Conventional Wisdom crowd is they always
want to boil elections down to less than their irreducible complexities.
"The final question that will decide this race is..." There is no such
question. There are a multiplicity of issues, personalities, preferences,
and sentiments from millions of people, a half dozen candidates, and
countless commentators, pollsters, and news anchors that will ultimately
influence the outcome of this election. The charge for the Huckabee
Campaign, and for the hundreds of campaign managers across the country, will
be to ignore the pundits and their boiled-down approach and instead embrace
the admonition of Napoleon, when he said:
"The battlefield is a scene of chaos. The victory is the one who controls
that chaos, both his own, and his enemy's."
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