You hear a politician who says he wants to help people, a sort of Dr. Phil-meets-Ned Flanders for the political arena, someone who just might be able to talk, listen and care his way into the Oval Office. ~Michael Scherer

A politician who wants to help people?  Mr. Bush wanted to help children, and gave us NCLB; he wanted to help Iraqis, and they are now being massacred by the dozens and hundreds every day; he condemned the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and embraced hard-edged, city-destroying incompetence with a little torture thrown in.  Because he cares.  Because he has compassion, and wanted government “to move” when “people hurt.”  Unless they hurt in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Iraq or anywhere else.  Spare us a politician who wants to help people!  I think I may finally understand why the Brooklyn goombah seems so attractive to some people–whatever else you can say about him, he would never unload this treacly garbage about helping people on his audiences.  The point is not that actually helping people is objectionable, but that governments that attempt to “help” invariably do not help and inflict more suffering than if they had left well enough alone.  If governments focused their attention on the very few tasks they should be doing, they just might manage to provide public order and basic border security, keep the streets in good repair and prosecute lawbreakers most of the time.

On a much more fundamental level, Mr. Scherer has just described exactly why Huckabee will go nowhere in the primaries.  Real-life conservatives hate Ned Flanders as an idio-doodli-otic caricature of who we are, and I think all men with a pulse must despise Dr. Phil.  I suspect, but do not know, that all single men want Dr. Phil thrown in prison, where he never will be able to unleash his smarminess on the rest of humanity.  I assume most single women, if they allow themselves to admit the truth, feel the same.  To put these two figures together and have this hybrid talk about the need for arts programs would be to summon forth a lot of hostility.  I mean, a lot.

Of Huckabee, Michael had this good observation a couple months ago:

I recently noticed Mike Huckabee is releasing a book of feel-good psychobabble. I worry that there is an irreversible trend away from Southern politicians who shared folksy wisdom through entertaining metaphors towards Clintonian self-help-helplessness. I don’t want a President whose primary qualification seems to be the self-mastery of weight loss, spurred by diabetes.  I fear also that this is exactly what the American people do want.

Perhaps they really do want a Dr. Phil who can fit into the ugly clothes of Ned Flanders.  If that is the case, God help us all.

Update: On the other hand, Huckabee can also say things like this that make you want to forget the problems with his saccharine huckster act:

“Folks, I stand here today knowing full well that I am probably not the first choice to be president on Wall Street. I am probably not the first choice among the people on K Street,” he told the crowd. “I just want to be the first choice among the people who live on Main Street, out there in the heartland of America, who shop at Wal-Mart, who go to church, who hunt, who fish, who drive pickup trucks and listen to country music and follow NASCAR, the kind of people who are tired of politicians telling them what they want to hear rather than what the politician truly believes.”