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I'd (Heart) Huckabee a Lot More if He Wasn't Running for President
What do we know about Mike Huckabee? The answer to that, recently, is more than we ever thought we would. And that's worrisome in itself.
A few months ago, it seemed we were as likely to see Huckabee's name in the headlines as we were, say, Mike Gravel's. They occupied the same fringe of their parties, raving zealots with unique agendas, and almost no chance of being elected. As the caucuses near, however, the Arkansas evangelist has surprised pretty much everyone by making huge gains in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. With the help of a bizarrely potent celebrity endorsement by Chuck Norris, he leads the polls in South Carolina, has tied Giuliani in Illinois, and is rising fast in Iowa. This is distressing not only for the fact that Walker, Texas Ranger could potentially sway an election, but also because it reveals without a doubt the electoral might of the home-schooling-Darwin-doubting-gay-marriage-hating-arms-bearing fundamentalists he and Huckabee represent.
A recent Washington Post profile delved in the former Arkansas governor's past, portraying Huckabee as a formidable and ambitious politician who rose from humble working class beginnings, through sheer passion, talent, and determination, to become a Republican frontrunner. It is an inspiring, truly American story. Incidentally, Huckabee shares his hometown of Hope, Arkansas, with Bill Clinton, but unlike the former president, his strongest calling, rather than politics, was the pulpit. The Post's profile traces Huckabee's religious fervor back to Explo '72, a seminal gathering of evangelicals in Dallas, where he “spent six days learning from the Rev. Billy Graham and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, how to lead others to the Lord.” Faith, Huckabee says on his Web site, “doesn't influence my decisions, it drives them.”
Is a politician whose greatest passion in life is bringing nonbelievers to Christ, whose decisions are driven by a literal interpretation of the Bible, really the best choice to lead the free world into the 21st century? To put it another way, says Huckabee in The Washington Post, "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
Well that's a relief. Because here we all were thinking the answers were in universal health care, better schools, and fewer wars. How embarrassing! If only we'd known sooner that theocracy was the way to go, we could have avoided wasting so many years attempting to keep the government out of places of worship.
At this point it's hard to say what's scarier, a presidential candidate with more faith in Jesus than in his own government, or the possibility of Chuck Norris becoming Secretary of Homeland Security.