An election digression

OK, look. I know I'm mostly supposed to write about theater here. There are plenty of other theater bloggers (Don, Isaac, Matthew) who also write about politics, but I've tried to keep the Rebellion on topic. But I spent Thursday night watching the Iowa caucus results and there's something I've got to get off my chest in a venue where at least the tens and tens of readers I have here will see it.

I'm glad our hometown boy won the Democratic caucus, though I'm pretty OK with Edwards and Clinton too. But the fact that I live in a world where Mike Huckabee looks like a viable presidential candidate makes my head spin. I believe that if there were any decent reporters on the ground in Arkansas looking into his tenure there, Huckabee would be laughed out of the race.

Huckabee, like Bill Clinton, is a former governor of my home state of Arkansas. He first came into the top spot there because he was lieutenant governor when Clinton's successor, Jim Guy Tucker, was somewhat speciously convicted in the Republican-spurred, Clinton-hunting Whitewater investigation. (Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run on separate tickets in Arkansas.)

Huckabee was elected to two subsequent full terms of office before being forced to give up the governorship a year ago due to Arkansas's term-limit law, and announced his intention to run for the presidency upon leaving office.

Here's the thing: Mike Huckabee was a pretty shitty governor. He wasn't completely Satan—I understand how some of his history appeals to centrists and other Republicans who've become disillusioned with the Bush-Cheney-Rove school. He helped to establish basic health care for Arkansas's kids, whether or not their parents could afford insurance. He helped in some ways to improve the state's education system and its roadways. He raised a lot of taxes (antithesis to fiscally conservative rich Repubs) in order to do some of these things.

But he was a shitbag in other important places. He took from less popular (but still important) social initiatives to fund the glitzier ones. He's a former Southern Baptist preacher who still doesn't believe in things like sex education or evolution. And he has a list of ethical violations a mile long.

The man was repeatedly accused of accepting unacceptably large gifts during his reign. Shortly before he was forced to leave office, Mike and Janet Huckabee created wedding registries at the websites of Target and Dillard's department stores. Arkansas law prohibits gifts of more than $100 to political leaders, but there's an exception for wedding gifts. The Huckabees ostensibly created the registries to commemorate the fact that they had to move out of the governor's mansion and back into a house of their own.

They could have spun it as gifts for their newly recommemorated "covenant marriage", an event they celebrated in 2004 at the center of Little Rock's Alltel Arena in a mass religious ceremony that was partially promoted with state funds.

If that's not enough, how about the fact that Janet Huckabee ran for Arkansas's secretary of state in 2002 when Mike was running for his second full term as governor? Janet could have ended up as the one certifying Mike's election results. She lost, of course—to the Democratic candidate, who happens to be a recovering alcoholic. That didn't stop Janet from suggesting to the national press that he's still a drunk. Janet's candidacy in 2002 makes me wonder why those same NYT reporters—the ones who included her six years ago in their "crazy election stories" roundup—aren't reporting on the Huckabees now.

I told my cubemate the wedding registry story on Thursday, and he took me around the rest of the office saying, "Tell them what you just told me about Mike Huckabee!" It's the exact same thing I spent most of Christmas week talking abut with my own extended family; we're all flabbergasted.

I'm not even taking into account the Wayne Dumond story. Dumond was convicted as a rapist during Bill Clinton's time as governor; Clinton critics on the right-wing website Free Republic brought renewed light to the case in the mid-’90s, suggesting that Clinton had influenced Dumond's case because the victim was a distant relative of Bill's. Huckabee joined the Freeper bandwagon and got Dumond paroled in 1997; Dumond went on to rape and murder a Missouri woman two years later.

I understand that Huckabee is charming. He's funny. As a former preacher, he's a good speaker who knows how to turn a crowd. His weight loss and marathon running are hooks that get him on talk shows. Chuck Norris likes him.

But the man has no business being considered for the presidency, and if the national media were doing any digging into his actual political career in Arkansas then we'd all know that.

For the record: Despite my deep and abiding love of my "Stewart-Colbert ’08" t-shirt (and can't we please somehow enforce an exception in the writers' strike for those two? Starting a primary season without them just seems so wrong), I'm starting to think "Obama-Edwards ’08" might be the way to go.

Also of note: Via my friend Matt, this article on how Huckabee's win could boost McCain in New Hampshire, with this choice and remarkably honest quote from Huckabee's campaign manager about Mitt Romney: "'We’re going to see if we can’t take Romney out,' Mr. Rollins said. 'We like John. Nobody likes Romney.'"

See also (hat tip to my colleague Marc): International reactions to the Iowa caucus results, from the Financial Times.

Comments

[Julie S.]

I was flabbergasted. But then again, Huckabee might be the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats.

[Dan]

I heard the Huckabee story on On The Media last week - pretty outrageous. I think Huckabee's lead will evaporate when he moves out of the heartland. I mean, I hope so. It has to ... right?

Incidentally, did you see that The Daily Show and Colbert will be back tonight? Sans writers, including (apparently) the writing skills of WGA members Stewart and Colbert. But I'll be watching anyway.