The news story covering Huckabee’s FA essay has taken his opening lines about the administration’s “arrogant bunker mentality” and made them half of the entire story.  The blog right is, predictably, throwing a fit, with more than a few declaring that they cannot support Huckabee.  It probably cannot help Huckabee in the early voting that the only person I have seen praising the essay is…Joe Klein.  The remarkable thing is that Huckabee’s essay, while I have problems with a lot of it, does some of what the Republicans need to do politically (balance GOP support for the war with a broader break with at least some of the more egregious flaws of Bush’s foreign policy) and it demonstrates some reasonably good understanding of Iran and Pakistan.  Some of his proposals (launching attacks into Pakistan, remaining in Iraq, etc.) seem terrible to me, but they are exactly the kinds of things that Republican voters should appreciate about this essay. 

On the GOP’s largest general election liability and its worst policy position, the war in Iraq, Huckabee remains a loyal yes-man, so what do they really have to complain about?  His opposition to the Law of the Sea Treaty is red meat for the base, while his general interest in more robust diplomacy otherwise should satisfy more moderate Republicans.  Most of the opposition to the essay, I suspect, has been driven by a visceral reaction against the knock on the administration, as if criticising Mr. Bush were some unpardonable error.  If Republicans are going to make criticism of the current administration’s foreign policy completely off-limits and punish the candidates who make those criticisms, they are going to lose and they will deserve to lose.  My guess is that Huckabee’s foreign policy, whatever its substantive merits and problems, will sound reasonable and it will provide a refreshing departure for Republicans who don’t want to give up on the war but who also don’t want another four years of blustering militarism.  It isn’t the foreign policy I would prefer, but for a lot of disillusioned Republican voters it might be just right. 

Nonetheless, if he wants to shore up his reputation here, he really has to stop analogising international relations to family quarrels.  There is a way to make the argument he wants to make on Iran that doesn’t involve referring to reconciling with your estranged brother or what-have-you.

Update: James thinks the “arrogant bunker mentality” line has everything backwards–it is the administration’s enthusiasm muck about in the rest of the world that is the problem.  That’s true, but it doesn’t entirely rule out something like the mentality to which Huckabee is referring.  If I understood him right, the mentality in question is one that believes that the world is unipolar, we are indispensable and must be involved in everyone else’s business, but which also thinks that we are under dire threat from tinpot dictatorships on the other side of the planet.  The first part is the arrogance, and the second is the bunker mentality, and the administration displays elements of both.  Indeed it justifies its activist foreign policy in terms of its paranoia about overblown foreign threats.  Obviously, there must be a much, much better way to say it than he did (as with so many things Huckabeean), but there is something to this critique.

Philip Klein is also right that there is something in the essay to alienate all factions (conversely, there is something in the speech to reassure most factions).  It is true that it is incoherent, but that is what you will get when you are a candidate trying to shore up a pro-war base with a foreign policy that isn’t simply a reiteration of what we have now.  When every feint in the direction of realism is greeted by hostility, it will not be surprising that the would-be realist has to keep zig-zagging with promises to invade Pakistan and reject the Law of the Sea right after he denounces arrogance and the “bunker mentality.”  Also, the critique that he is proposing “a foreign aid program that would make Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society look like a trivial domestic initiative” must also be aimed at Romney, who proposed something very similar in hisFA essay:

 I envision that the summit would lead to the creation of a Partnership for Prosperity and Progress: a coalition of states that would assemble resources from developed nations and use them to support public schools (not Wahhabi madrasahs), microcredit and banking, the rule of law, human rights, basic health care, and free-market policies in modernizing Islamic states. These resources would be drawn from public and private institutions and from volunteers and nongovernmental organizations.  

My guess is that Hillary Clinton would have preferred it had her husband not said the phrase “one of my impeachment managers” more than once in the course of a conversation about her campaign.  Then there was this:

That’s got nothing to do with the ’90s. That’s sort of a superficial, you know, bigotry. That’s like saying ageism or something. It’s like if you fought and did good things, we got to give you a gold watch and tell you goodbye.

Did he just call Obama an ageist bigot?  I think he did.  And a superficial ageist bigot at that!

But that wasn’t all:

The Northern Irish didn’t think that to turn the page, they had to throw out the people who had represented their respective points of view. They thought they were more likely to work together to effect positive change because of what they had done in the past.

There you have it: Bill Clinton just compared his wife to Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness.  For Bill, Hillary has the same kind of experience as the fanatical politicians of DUP and Sinn Fein.

“If people are looking for somebody who’s a good talker, I’m not your man,” Romney said, knocking his chief rival but also alluding to his challenge. “If they’re looking for somebody who has demonstrated a record of solving difficult problems and making difficult situations into successful outcomes then I am your man.”  ~Politico

In recent presidential history, we have had someone who was primarily a good talker and someone who was neither a good talker nor a great problem-solver.  The public typically doesn’t seem very interested in effective leadership or management skill.  I’d say Romney is in a lot of trouble, and for the first time he seems to be acknowledging publicly how bad it is.

Huckabee’s Foreign Affairs essay appears to be a rehash of the speech he gave at CSIS several months ago.  The people who hated that speech because it talked about containing Iran (one of Huckabee’s better ideas) will probably also hate this essay.  As I said about that speech, there are a few things that interventionists will reject (but they will reject them fiercely), a few things realists might find acceptable and virtually nothing that a non-interventionist would like. The entire essay is something of a grab-bag and reads very unevenly.  It has its moments, and it remains the case that his foreign policy views are much more substantive than conservative media outlets have acknowledged, but it still needs some work.  (The sections on Russia are not nearly detailed enough, and there is no attention paid to China, India or Latin America.) 

Once again, he supports the Powell Doctrine.  He also mentions Shinseki by name, which is one of those things that Republican loyalists hate.  

Huckabee said:

The first thing I will do as president is send Congress my comprehensive plan for achieving energy independence within ten years of my inauguration. We will explore, we will conserve, and we will pursue all types of alternative energy: nuclear, wind, solar, ethanol, hydrogen, clean coal, biomass, and biodiesel. 

I am reminded of Brownback’s pledge to cure cancer in ten years.  There is nothing necessarily wrong with this proposal, but you have to know that it’s going to take longer than ten years to develop our own sources to replace all foreign sources of energy.  That said, this is a big step up from his “no more valuable than their sand” line that he always uses about the Saudis, which is probably a great crowd-pleaser but which confirms in the minds of an informed audience that he is trivial.  Like Romney, he wants to expand the intelligence services and the armed forces. 

He admits the obvious about the strain on the military:

We still do not have enough troops in Afghanistan and are losing hard-won gains there as foreign fighters pour in and the number of Iraq-style suicide attacks increases. Our current active armed forces simply are not large enough. We have relied far too heavily on the National Guard and the Reserves and worn them out.

He then promises a huge increase in government spending:

Right now, we spend about 3.9 percent of our GDP on defense, compared with about six percent in 1986, under President Ronald Reagan. We need to return to that six percent level [bold mine-DL]. And we must stop using active-duty forces for nation building and return to our policy of using other government agencies to build schools, hospitals, roads, sewage treatment plants, water filtration systems, electrical facilities, and legal and banking systems. We must marshal the goodwill, ingenuity, and power of our governmental and nongovernmental organizations in coordinating and implementing these essential nonmilitary functions.

His views on Iraq are standard, party-line stuff:

Seeing Iraqi Sunnis in Anbar, Diyala, and parts of Baghdad reject al Qaeda and join our forces, often at tremendous risk to themselves, has been a truly extraordinary shift. Those who once embraced al Qaeda members as liberators now see them for what these radicals are: brutal oppressors who want to take Iraq back to the seventh century. And this development is serving as a model for turning Shiite tribes against their militants. Despite what the gloomy Democrats in the United States profess, reconciliation is happening in Iraq, only it is bottom up rather than top down, and since it comes directly from the people, it can end the violence faster. Benchmarks are being reached in fact, if not in law. As Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Congress last September, oil revenues are being distributed, de-Baathification is being reversed, and the Shiite-dominated government is giving financial resources to the provinces, including Sunni areas.

Not surprisingly, he is against withdrawal.  His remarks on Iran are, once again, unusually sane, and then he says this:

I support going forward with the current plan to set up ten missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic to protect Europe from Iranian missiles.

This is a pointless proposal, and one that has been nothing other than a provocation to the Russians. 

Huckabee does seem to show some understanding of the situation in Russia:

But I see him [Putin] for what he is: a staunch nationalist in a country that has no democratic tradition. He will do everything he can to reassert Russia’s power — militarily, economically, diplomatically.

His fears of Russian imperialist ambitions (outside of its near-abroad at least) are unfounded, and I would have been interested to hear him say more about his views on what our policy towards former Soviet republics should be and whether he supports continued NATO expansion.  Finally, his views on Pakistan are some of the best and most informed I have heard from a candidate.  That may not be saying much, but it’s something.  Except, that is, when he borrows a line from Obama:

Rather than wait for the next strike, I prefer to cut to the chase by going after al Qaeda’s safe havens in Pakistan. 

This is a very dangerous proposal.  His rationalisation is worrisome:

The threat of an attack on us is far graver than the risk that a quick and limited strike against al Qaeda would bring extremists to power in Pakistan.

Actually, no.  If an American attack inside Pakistan brought about that result, it would be far, far worse than almost any attack.   

Those who have been spreading the idea that Huckabee’s foreign policy is that we “be nice” to everyone have basically been lying to the public.  There are sections where he talks about using American power in a less arrogant and self-defeating way, and he does want to engage Iran, but his foreign policy has much more to it than his establishment foes are allowing.  Arguably, Huckabee is starting to appear as the closest thing the Republicans have to a realist.  He is still locked into supporting the war in Iraq, but unlike his major rivals he occasionally displays some understanding.  In many other places, though, he is also just pulling together ideas that have no logical relationship.

And I’m convinced the world will remember as well because you’re going to do something which people don’t expect, which is give me a victory.  And then I’m going to New Hampshire where I’m pretty solidly in the lead in New Hampshire, and I’m gonna be in Nevada, and I’m gonna win Nevada, and I’m gonna be in Wyoming, and I’ll win that one and Michigan. And we’re gonna do pretty darn well—that’s at least what I plan. ~Mitt Romney

The false memelives on:

No one thought to raise objections to Mormonism when Mo Udall ran for president, nor even when Mitt’s father, George, made a bid.

In fact, some raised objections in both cases, and opposition to a Mormon candidate was approximately as strong then as it is now.  If it was never as central to the campaign as it has been this year, it is partly because Romney’s father and Mo Udall did not run as a religious conservative and as the spokesmen for religious and social conservatives.  Romney is appealing to a constituency that was always going to be less receptive to him.  It is also the case that the media have pushed this angle since before Romney announced his candidacy.

Giuliani has an almost impossibly high bar to cross, according to Ross:

At this point I’d go further: No matter who wins Iowa, Huck or Romney, Rudy needs to finish ahead of Mitt in New Hampshire [bold mine-DL] â€“ either by coming in second to McCain or winning outright – or else he’s going to drop completely off the map before Florida rolls around.

Rudy also needs a new personality, but neither that nor this favourable outcome is going to be forthcoming.  There were two approaches to the front-loaded primary system: it was either going to magnify the importance of the early states immeasurably, or it was going to make the early states irrelevant.  Right now it appears as if the first view was correct.  Giuliani’s campaign, indeed the entire rationale of his candidacy, relied on the second being right.  It is still too early to say for sure, but if this marks the beginning of the end for Giuliani it will come as a relief for millions of conservatives who really never wanted to have to accommodate such a nominee.

We are all naturally inclined to see the candidates we dislike strongly as also being the most unelectable, disastrous candidates who will doom our preferred party to oblivion (or something to that effect).  This makes a certain amount of sense, since you see a candidate’s positions, weigh them, find them wanting and then assume that similar scrutiny from the general public will lead them to the same rational conclusions.  Likewise, candidates whom we support or favour always seem much more broadly appealing.  People who are thrilled by Obama believe that he is actually electable nationwide (and that he will magically heal our national divisions and reverse the aging process as well), and those who are horrified by Huckabee believe that he will be the cause of an electoral catastrophe.  Let’s test the latter proposition that nominating Huckabee would be a disaster.  Let me say up front that I think it would be a political disaster of a different kind, because I think many of Huckabee’s ideas are terrible, so I am not advocating a Huckabee nomination, which I see as a continuation of the errors of the Bush Era.  (I am on the record in any case as a Paul supporter who thinks that the GOP support for the war will doom it to defeat in any case unless the nominee adopts a different position.) 

First, some anecdotal evidence: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, the essential battleground state for next year, says that Huckabee would be the best and strongest Republican candidate, particularly in Ohio.  This could be an attempt at deception, I suppose, but on the face of it there really is something to the idea that a socially conservative and economically populist Republican would do well in Ohio.  Obviously, it doesn’t help Huckabee’s attempt to cast himself, implausibly, as an “authentic conservative” that Strickland says that Huckabee would be his preferred Republican candidate, but what it shows is that Huckabee may have the kind of cross-party and cross-ideology appeal that the GOP nominee will have to have to recover from the disastrous Bush era.  Strickland and Brown both capitalised on populist themes in their campaigns last year, and a Republican who could poach on that territory could keep Ohio in the GOP column.  A golly-gee venture capitalist and proponent of globalisation and pro-immigration free traders will not fare well there, just as they will not fare well across the Midwest, where the election will likely be decided. 

Obviously, it is Huckabee’s perceived flaws in fiscal policy that drive conservative pundits and some voters up the wall, but the question to ask is this: are moderate and independent voters really going to be put off by someone who has Huckabee’s fiscal record?  If not, then Huckabee’s poor record from the Club for Growth and Cato Institute perspective may be an asset in the general election to the extent that the general public is not really on board with CfG and Cato ideas.  You may view that, as I do in many ways, as regrettable and frustrating, but I think that is the political reality.  Fiscal and business conservatives who are not enthusiastic about Huckabee’s tax-hiking, corporation-bashing, vague nods to protectionism and pro-labour rhetoric should consider the possibility that these are the very areas where Republicans are weakest in the current environment.  Perhaps they, rather than the social conservatives, will have to make compromises and hold their noses while voting for the “lesser of two evils” for a change.  But just imagine for a moment a variant of Bushism that is not necessarily closely wedded to corporate interests and which supports enforcing immigration laws–that is what Huckabee is beginning to offer on paper and in his rhetoric (however cynical and opportunistic and craven his move to the right on immigration is).  This may be an undesirable ideology in many ways, but what it is not going to be is unpopular. 

The reality is that the GOP is in hideous shape for the next presidential election and will almost certainly lose.  It is not as if Huckabee would be jeopardising the Republicans’ advantageous position.  The question is then this: which candidate currently realistically gives the GOP the best chance to compete and possibly win next year?  It is not at all ridiculous to suggest that the GOP’s best chance at this point may, in fact, be Huckabee.  Jim Pinkerton, who has been talking up Huckabee for some time, has made a related argument.  That may be a commentary on how horrible the GOP’s chances really are, or it may reveal how distorted conservative views of the electorate have become that they think that it is an electoral liability that Huckabee is not a doctrinaire tax-slashing, small-governmennt conservative.  As someone who supports the quintessential tax-slashing, small-government conservative in the race, let me tell you that I feel confident that this is not the part of the message that is inspiring most of the enthusiasm for Ron Paul.  I wish we lived in Ron Paul’s America, but the frightening truth is that we may very well be living in Huckabee’s.  There are plenty of arguments against nominating Huckabee, but it’s not at all clear to me that an argument about his electability is one of them.  I would like nothing more than to see Bushism repudiated forever, so I don’t want Huckabee to win the nomination.  However, as perverse as it sounds, a Bushism that did not contain its open borders, corporatism and aggressive foreign policy elements would be one that a lot of Americans would support.    

That rumour about a foreign policy endorsement for Huckabee was probably somehow confused with the plan to announce Ed Rollins’ role as campaign chairman.  The endorsement was supposed to happen today in New Hampshire, which is where the Rollins press conference was.  Jason Zengerle has moredetails on Rollins and why he may not be as good for the campaign as he might at first appear to be.

Rollins has said of Huckabee: “I was with the old Reagan and I can promise you that this man comes as close as anyone to filling those shoes.”