Alec MacGillis sees Huntsman’s insistence that he puts “country first” as one of his bad campaigning habits:

It all adds up to his own milder version of what Newt Gingrich correctly identified in Mitt Romney as “pious baloney”: yes, Huntsman has perfected the art of campaign humblebrag.

Here’s Huntsman trying to capitalize on his retort to Romney in Sunday’s debate over his decision to go to China on behalf of the Obama administration: “We learned in one fell swoop the biggest difference between me and Mr. Romney: I’m somebody who believes in putting the country first. Mr. Romney apparently believes in politics first. I say that’s the problem in this country right now. That’s the reason we’re not puling together as a people, because everything is politics as opposed to remembering that we’re Americans first and foremost.” And I say, people who in “putting the country first” loudly point that they are doing so are thereby partly undermining that claim. Somehow, Huntsman manages to make a valid rebuttal to Romney sound like the warmed-over, self-regarding Beltway centrism being offered up by groups like this.

By all accounts, Huntsman was a capable, talented U.S. ambassador to China. Frankly, it’s a shame that he didn’t stay in a job where he was reportedly doing very good work. Instead, he’s spent the last eight months wasting his time as a presidential candidate in a race he was never going to get close to winning. Maybe in a perfectly fair world he would be able to take credit for the work he did in Beijing, cite it as proof that he has better qualifications than his rivals, and not be attacked for being appointed by the incumbent President from another party. In the real world, when a candidate cites his experience it is fair game for the other candidates to criticize or cast doubts on the experience in question. Since perceived closeness to Obama is a liability in Republican politics, the other candidates are going to exploit the fact that Obama appointed Huntsman to a position that the latter is now using as one of the credentials in support of his presidential bid.

On the one hand, Huntsman wants to run as the Republican capable of beating Obama, and he gives the impression of someone who has mostly bought into almost every partisan criticism of the administration, but on the other he acts hurt and insulted when an opponent makes the most basic partisan argument against him. When he accepted an appointment from Obama, everyone understood that he had lost whatever chance he had at a future Republican nomination while Obama is still in office, but Huntsman has spent the last year acting as if that were not true. He wants to capitalize on anti-Obama sentiment without indulging in it directly, and then he can present himself as the above-it-all patriot. He wants credit for being the dutiful public servant, but he doesn’t want to accept that there was always going to be a partisan political price to pay for taking the position in China. Huntsman wants to have things both ways, but that isn’t possible.