...unless, of course, the Democratic party implodes on itself worse than the GOP has. Or unless Carl Rove masterminds a genocide against every Democrat in the country—and I wouldn't put it past him, since he seems ruthless and crafty enough. (Please, my donkey-loving friends, take good care of yourselves for the next 18 months! I shudder to even think of what the American version of the Holocaust would look like.) Barring those two scenarios, a third Clinton presidency seems pretty ineluctable.
But that doesn't stop a boy from dreaming. Tonight I watched the first debate to help find the GOP candidate for the 2008 election, and I think I have fallen in electoral love with a candidate of whom I had previously never heard. In fact, because I didn't have time to watch the entire debate, I didn't even catch his name, a name which I searched the internet for when I got home tonight. That man's name is Mike Huckabee.
So what about Mr. Huckabee proved so irresistible? Unlike some of the other candidates, he responds candidly and spontaneously to the questions that are presented to him, instead of drifting toward safe, scripted "talking points." [Senator McCain bore a discomforting resemblance to a mechanical drone as he relied on an obviously scripted message, with pre-programmed gesticulation that made him appear to be doing "the Robot."] In my mind, answering questions directly and honestly—even when I disagree with the answers—is preferable to equivocation and ambiguity.
Unlike some of the other candidates, he is articulate, and (dare I say) presidential. [Did anyone notice how even moderator Chris Matthews grimaced and muttered an embarrassed "Oh, God," at congressman Ron Paul's pitifully simplistic and regrettably stupid response to a question regarding Constitutional amendment?] After seven years of a president who has misunderestimated the difficulties associated with spitting out a coherent sentence, it would be nice to have a head of state who uses real words and arranges them in a sequence that follows what other Americans recognize as a standard, grammatically governed order. The whole part about Huckabee's eloquence is icing on the cake. [PS: I recently laughed aloud after finding this Bushism: ""You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."]
What I liked most about him was that the views he expressed during the debate were my views. And, though after reading his webpage I do not agree with everything he believes, I do endorse the majority of his positions. For example, on the topic of the environment and global warming, he said,
The most important thing about global warming is this: whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is gonna be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it. It's the old boy scout rule about the camp site: you leave the camp site in better shape than you found it. I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this earth, be good caretakers of the natural resources that don't belong to us. We just get to use them; we have no right to abuse them.
He was candid and unapologetic about his faith. I find it deeply disingenuous for candidates to disguise their beliefs in order to appear more electable. As Huckabee himself was quoted as saying, "I’m not as troubled by a person who has a different faith. I’m troubled by a person who tells me their faith doesn’t influence their decisions.” For those of you who wax indignant at politicians who try to hide their personal belief as a political move to appeal to secular, undecided or centrist voters, have a look at what Huckabee said when asked about his faith:
...I've said in general, and I would say this tonight to any of us: when a person says that 'my faith doesn't affect my decision making,' I would say that the person's saying their [sic] faith is not significant enough to impact their [sic] decision process. I tell people up front that my faith does affect my decision process. It explains me. No apology for that.
My faith says 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' ...I want to state very clearly: a person's faith shouldn't quality or disquality him for public office. It shouldn't do that. But we ought to be honest and open about it, and I do think that it does help explain who are are, what are value systems are, what makes us tick and what our processors are.
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