The Huckabee Factor Decem ber 12, 2007

Decem ber 12, 2007

The Huckabee Factor
By ZEV CHAFET S

Correction Appended

Mike Huckabee walked into the lobby of the Des Moines Marriott at 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 3, deposited an
armful of dirty laundry at the desk and checked to make sure he was being credited with Marriott Rewards
points toward his next stay. Then, accompanied by his wife, Janet, his daughter, Sarah, and his press
secretary, Alice Stewart — who doubles as his Boston Marathon trainer — he walked into the dark, freezing
morning, climbed into a waiting S.U.V. and headed for Central College in Pella, Iowa.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, was in a buoyant mood on three hours of sleep. The night before,
his commercial flight suffered a long Chicago holdover on the way from Boston, but he had reason to hope
that his days at the mercy of the airlines might be numbered. A Des Moines Register opinion poll had just
shown Huckabee passing Mitt Romney to take the lead in the run-up to the Jan. 3 caucus. His picture, he
already knew, was on the front page of that morning’s USA Today. Now he was headed to Central College,
to appear, surrounded by enthusiastic students, on ‘‘The Early Show’’ on CBS . This kind of momentum, he
hoped, would finally produce enough cash to allow him to charter his own plane.

The governor was especially happy that morning about an impending endorsement he expected (and
received the following day) from Tim LaHaye, the author of the apocalyptic ‘‘Left Behind’’ series of novels.
‘‘Left Behind’’ is wildly popular among evangelicals, who have bought more than 65 million copies, making
LaHaye a very rich man and one of the few writers who is also a major philanthropist. Recently he donated
a hockey rink to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, although some members of the faculty there deride
‘‘Left Behind’’ as science fiction. Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, has no such reservations.
He considers the ‘‘Left Behind’’ books, in which the world comes to a violent end as Jesus triumphs over
Satan, a ‘‘compelling story written for nontheologians.’’

Huckabee’s affability and populist economic and social views have sometimes been misinterpreted as a
moderate brand of evangelical Christianity. In fact, as he wrote in his book ‘‘Character Makes a Difference,’’
he considers liberalism to be a cancer on Christianity. Huckabee is an admirer of the late Jerry Falwell
(whose son, Jerry Jr., recently endorsed his candidacy) and subscribes wholeheartedly to the principles of
the Moral Majority. He also affirms the Baptist Faith and Message statement: ‘‘The Holy Bible . . . has truth,
without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.’’

On the road to Pella, Huckabee talked about the enthusiasm he now encounters everywhere he goes. For
example, he said, his driver in California not only declined payment but also wrote the governor a $50
personal check right on the spot. It was, I thought, a dangerous anecdote to tell within earshot of a
professional driver traveling along an icy highway at high speed, but Huckabee was feeling invulnerable, and

the driver, I later realized, was already on the governor’s team. Huckabee normally starts his mornings by
running 6 to 10 miles and reading a chapter from the Book of Proverbs. Today he was too pressed to do
either, but he planned to catch up later. Anyway, he knew much of the day’s assignment, Chapter 3, by
heart. ‘‘Trust in the Lord,’’ he quoted, ‘‘and lean not upon thine own understanding.’’ Not a bad motto for a
campaign that is still too broke to do any independent polling.

Chapter 3 also contains the admonition to ‘‘keep sound wisdom and discretion.’’ Huckabee is, indeed, a
discreet fellow, but he has no trouble making his feelings known. He mentioned how much he respected his
fellow candidates John McCain and Rudolph W. Giuliani. The name of his principal rival in Iowa, Mitt
Romney, went unmentioned. Romney, a Mormon, had promised that he would be addressing the subject of
his religion a few days later. I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the only Republican candidate with
a degree in theology, if he considered Mormonism a cult or a religion. ‘‘I think it’s a religion,’’ he said. ‘‘I
really don’t know much about it.’’

I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own:
‘‘Don’t Mormons,’’ he asked in an innocent voice, ‘‘believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?’’

In this unpredictable primary season, Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa — and beyond — is perhaps the
greatest surprise. Iowa was supposed to be a pushover for Mitt Romney. Romney, the former
Massachusetts governor, began working the state more than a year ago. He commands an army of trained
professionals and a vast ad budget. Mitt Romney’s message flows like Muzak out of every radio and TV in
the state. All this effort has reportedly cost Romney more than $7 million. Huckabee, by contrast, has spent
less than $400,000 in Iowa. His paid staff in the state is not much bigger than a softball team. Televised
Huckabee ads have been harder to catch than ‘‘I Love Lucy’’ reruns.

Even more amazing, when the Register poll came out Dec. 2, Huckabee hadn’t been in the state for three
weeks. In campaign time, that’s approximately three centuries. But absence made hearts grow only fonder.
Not only was Huckabee leading in Iowa, he was also five points ahead of Romney, 29 percent to 24 percent,
and double digits away from the rest of the field.

The movement was catching hold beyond Iowa too. On Dec. 5, a Rasmussen daily tracking poll showed
Huckabee leading the Republican field nationally, ahead of Giuliani by three points, 20 percent to 17
percent. This represented an eight-point jump for Huckabee in only a week. Other polls still had Giuliani in
the lead, but the Real Clear Politics Web site, which averages national surveys, showed Huckabee in a
virtual tie for second.

Still, in spite of this surge in popularity, Huckabee has almost no money or organization. He has no national
finance chairman, no speechwriters and a policy staff of three. His ‘‘national field director’’ is his 25-year-old
daughter, Sarah. Huckabee does have a pollster, Dick Dresner, but so far there hasn’t been enough cash to
take any polls. ‘‘I think we can go until the beginning of the year,’’ Dresner told me. ‘‘If we start by then to
raise some money, we can begin to acquire the trappings of a campaign. Which, at the moment, we don’t
really have.’’

Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, doubts that Huckabee will come up with the
money. ‘‘He spends more time in cable TV studios than he does meeting with his finance committee,’’ he

says. ‘‘A big win in Iowa will get him enough to go on for a couple weeks. Then, if he comes in second or third
in New Hampshire, he’s in the race. Short of that, he’s a one-night stand.’’

Many Republican strategists remain dubious about Huckabee’s chances. ‘‘He’ll get hammered in New
Hampshire,’’ the Republican consultant Mike Murphy told me. ‘‘A primary campaign is like a book. Iowa is
just the first chapter. After that come more chapters. Opponents will hit Huckabee for being soft on
immigration, Arkansas allegations, that kind of thing. And at some point, Republican elites will begin to ask,
Is what we need a smallstate governor who doesn’t believe in Darwin?’’

Huckabee himself speaks about a Nascar strategy, with his opponents crashing into walls or one another
and him, as the last man on wheels, winning the race. Other candidates, especially Romney and Fred
Thompson, have already begun bumping up against him, and of course, he bumps back. And Rudy Giuliani,
the putative winner of a Romney flameout in Iowa, is starting to look for Huckabee in his Florida rearview
mirror.

Huckabee may lose the race, but he has already scrambled it. The Republican presidential contest was
expected to focus on foreign policy, national security and executive competence. Huckabee has moved it to
issues of character, religion and personality. Regardless of what happens, he is now a real player in the
Republican Party, a man to be taken seriously.

It has been a startlingly quick transformation. Six weeks ago, I met Huckabee for lunch at an Olive
Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. (I had offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed
his first choice, T.G.I. Friday’s.) He walked through the room in such total anonymity that I felt sorry for
him. Our waiter, Corey, had no idea who he was, or even that he was supposed to be somebody.

Lunch with Mike Huckabee is a study in faith-based dieting. He has lost 110 pounds in recent years, a feat
he chronicled in a book, ‘‘Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.’’ This has given Huckabee
something to talk about on daytime television. More important, it has lent him evangelical street cred. An
important part of the evangelical narrative is overcoming the devil. But Huckabee was seemingly born
born-again. Luckily for him, gluttony counts as a sin, Crisco as a Christian chemical dependency. By the time
he reached 40, Huckabee had packed more than 300 pounds onto his 5-foot-11 frame. Then he began
wrestling, calorie by calorie, with Satan.

Huckabee ordered soup and a sandwich without drama or comment and began talking about rock ’n’ roll.
This is his regular warm-up gambit with reporters of a certain age, meant to convey that he is a cool guy for
a Baptist preacher. Naturally I fell for it, and asked who he would like to play at his inaugural. ‘‘I’ve got to
start with the Stones,’’ Huckabee said. The governor regards 1968 as the dawning of ‘‘the age of the birth-
control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.’’ The Rolling Stones
album ‘‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’’ provided the soundtrack for that annus terribilis. But Mike
Huckabee wanted me to know that he believes in the separation of church and stage.

The governor’s musical wish list also included John Mellencamp, who, he noted, would be welcome despite
their differing political views; the country duo Brooks & Dunn; Stevie Wonder; and, surprisingly, Grand
Funk Railroad. ‘‘That’s a groundbreaking group,’’ he said earnestly. ‘‘The bass player, Mel Schacher, is very
underrated. ’’ Our food arrived and Huckabee poked at his croutons while gamely turning the conversation

to issues. He mentioned three: tax cuts, financing for arts education and energy independence.‘‘We have to
get to the point where we need the Saudis’ oil about as much as we need their sand,’’ he said. It was a
standard line, delivered without any particular passion.

The price of oil took us to foreign affairs, which Huckabee knows is not his strong suit. He quoted Pat
Buchanan’s crack from the 1992 presidential campaign that Bill Clinton’s foreign-policy experience came
from eating at the International House of Pancakes. But Clinton circa 1992 — who had worked briefly for
Senator William Fulbright and studied the ways of the world at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford — was Prince
Metternich compared with Huckabee.

In his defense, Huckabee mentioned that as governor, he had visited ‘‘35 or 40 countries,’’ where he
sometimes negotiated trade deals. ‘‘In some ways, this kind of experience is more significant than that of
senators who sit on some committee,’’ he said gamely. He also noted that George W. Bush came to office as
a Southern governor without foreign-policy experience.

But things have changed since then. Huckabee says he believes that the next president of the United States
will have to lead Western civilization in a worldwide conflict with radical Islam. For a man with that kind of
ambition, he has not been particularly well briefed. On Dec. 4, for instance, he was asked about the National
Intelligence Estimate released the day before, which found that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons
program in 2003. Huckabee said that he hadn’t seen it, though it had been the top news story in the
country, maybe the world, for the previous 24 hours.

At lunch, when I asked him who influences his thinking on foreign affairs, he mentioned Thomas Friedman,
the New York Times columnist, and Frank Gaffney, a neoconservative and the founder of a research group
called the Center for Security Policy. This is like taking travel advice from Little Red Riding Hood and the
Wolf, but the governor seemed unaware of the incongruity. When I pressed him, he mentioned he had once
‘‘visited’’ with Richard Haass, the middle-of-the-road president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Huckabee has no military experience beyond commanding the Arkansas National Guard, but he doesn’t see
this as an insuperable problem. ‘‘What you do,’’ he explained, ‘‘is surround yourself with the best possible
advice.’’ The only name he mentioned was Representative Duncan Hunter of California. ‘‘Duncan is
extraordinarily well qualified to be secretary of Defense,’’ he said.

‘‘If you aren’t for some reason elected president, what cabinet position would you be suited for?’’ I asked.
Huckabee paused, considering. ‘‘Secretary of health and human services would be one,’’ he said. ‘‘Secretary
of transportation, or the interior.’’ Perhaps aware that this wasn’t a Mount Rushmore self-evaluation, he
quickly added that he doesn’t really want a cabinet position or any other government job. ‘‘I’d be just as
happy to go back to Arkansas and open a bait shop on a lake,’’ he said. Huckabee was eager to separate
himself from George W. Bush, who, he complained, often visited Arkansas without bothering to notify the
governor’s office. ‘‘Clinton was much better at letting us know his plans and including us in his activities. He
was always gracious and respectful.’’ In September, Clinton told George Stephanopoulos of ABC that
Huckabee was the only Republican ‘‘dark horse that’s got any kind of chance.’’

Clinton’s goodwill stems, Huckabee believes, from Huckabee’s own restraint during the Monica Lewinsky
scandal. ‘‘Obviously I was asked to comment. If I had been willing to criticize President Clinton, I could have
made a cottage industry out of it. But I didn’t do that, I didn’t discuss it at all. And I think he was grateful

for that.’’

Hillary Clinton had recently announced that, if elected president, she would use her husband as a ‘‘roving
ambassador.’’ I asked Huckabee if he envisioned a similar role for George W. Bush. ‘‘I think he just wants to
go back to Texas,’’ Huckabee said. ‘‘I’ve heard him say that.’’

‘‘But if he wanted be involved?’’ I asked. Huckabee paused, picking a crouton out of his salad. ‘‘Well, if the
matter ever came up, I wouldn’t entirely dismiss it,’’ he said finally.

Right about then Corey, our waiter, came over with the check. I introduced him to the candidate. ‘‘I thought
you looked familiar,’’ he said diplomatically. ‘‘What are you for?’’ Huckabee gave him a friendly, quizzical
look.

‘‘What issues are you for?’’

‘‘Oh,’’ the governor said. ‘‘Ah, tax cuts. Support for arts education. And energy independence. I want to get
where we need the Saudis’ oil about as much as we need their sand.’’

Corey mentioned that he, personally, would like to see waiters’ tips rise to 18 percent. Huckabee laughed
agreeably but said nothing. No Republican candidate wants to get caught by a reporter advocating a price
hike for anything.

Nowadays Huckabee has more policy positions, but his campaign is really all about his Christian
character. His slogan is ‘‘Faith, Family, Freedom,’’ which Huckabee, who was once a public-relations man
for the Texas televangelist James Robison, wrote himself. Huckabee is no theocrat. He simply believes in
the power of the Christian message, and in his ability to embody and deliver it. ‘‘It’s not that we want to
impose our religion on somebody,’’ he wrote in ‘‘Character Makes a Difference,’’ a book first published in
1997 (as ‘‘Character Is the Issue’’) and reissued earlier this year. ‘‘It’s that we want to shape the culture
and laws by using a worldview we believe has value.’’

During his years in politics, Huckabee has become a master at disarming secular audiences. Throughout the
campaign he has impressed the national press corps with his ability to dodge questions aimed at portraying
him as a fundamentalist. Asked in a CNN debate, for example, what Jesus would do about capital
punishment, Huckabee responded that Jesus was too smart to run for public office. On another occasion,
queried if only Baptists go to heaven, he remarked that not even all the Baptists he knows will get past the
pearly gates. Such jokes are designed to give outsiders the impression that Huckabee couldn’t be all that
religious. But they are really just witty formulations of standard evangelical doctrine, things not even the
most ardent country Baptist preacher could disagree with.

The Rev. Wallace Edgar is such a preacher. He has known Mike Huckabee for more than 20 years, since
they led Baptist churches near each other in Texarkana. Wallace is a big Huckabee fan. ‘‘Mike was very
conservative with the Scriptures, he didn’t deviate from the Word,’’ he told me. Some born-again Christians
don’t like Huckabee’s light touch, or the fact that he has involved himself in secular politics at all. A few even
accuse him of neglecting the obligation to engage in personal evangelism. Huckabee addressed this issue in
September, in an interview with The Baptist Press. ‘‘In fact, I think I’ve had far more opportunities because
of my position as a governor and now as a candidate for president to share my faith,’’ he told Will Hall, a

reporter for the paper. ‘‘Nobody’s paying me; nobody’s forcing me to talk about what Christ means to me,
and when I’m able to share it, I think it has a, you know, a very dramatic and powerful impact, and they
know it’s what really drives me and explains me, if you will.’’

In late November, Huckabee began running a short television ad called ‘‘Believe.’’ It starts with the
candidate declaring, ‘‘Faith doesn’t just influence me, it really defines me.’’ As he speaks, the words
‘‘Christian Leader’’ flash across the screen. This ad was, of course, directed at the evangelical voters of
Iowa. But it has also caught the attention of big-time figures in evangelical Christianity, many of whom have
refrained from supporting Huckabee’s candidacy. This failure has puzzled and angered the governor. At the
Olive Garden he spoke with bitterness about Richard Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious
Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. ‘‘Richard Land swoons for Fred Thompson,’’ he
said. ‘‘I don’t know what that’s about. For reasons I don’t fully understand, some of these Washington-
based people forget why they are there. They make ‘electability’ their criterion. But I am a true soldier for
the cause. If my own abandon me on the battlefield, it will have a chilling effect.’’

The following week, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, Huckabee won the roomful of grass-roots
evangelicals but failed to gain any significant endorsements from evangelical leaders. ‘‘The evangelical
leadership didn’t, and perhaps still doesn’t, perceive Governor Huckabee as a winner,’’ Charles Dunn, dean
of the school of government at Regent University, told me. ‘‘But more and more, it appears that the
leadership is not in touch with its followers.’’

This indictment extends to the founder of Dunn’s own university, Pat Robertson, who has endorsed Rudy
Giuliani. It applies equally to the National Right to Life Committee, which is with Fred Thompson; and to
the Rev. Bob Jones III, Jay Sekulow, head of the American Center for Law and Justice (the evangelical
counterpart of the A.C.L.U.), and Paul Weyrich, the conservative activist who helped build the evangelical
movement, all of whom are supporting Mitt Romney. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, is
still on the fence. ‘‘I just don’t understand his neutrality,’’ Huckabee told me one day at the end of October
in Des Moines. ‘‘I’d be an obvious choice for his endorsement. We’re old friends. I love him and I love his
wife, Shirley. I just don’t know how to explain it.’’

Dunn offers a possible explanation for the resistance from born-again leaders. ‘‘Mike Huckabee isn’t just
another politician,’’ he told me. ‘‘He is an evangelical minister. If he does well in Iowa, as he appears to be
doing, he will become a national figure no matter what happens after that. He could wind up eclipsing all the
other evangelical leaders in this country in one fell swoop. And you know what it says in the Book of
Proverbs. ‘Envy is the rottenness of the bones.’ ’’

Dunn says he believes that Huckabee is actually lucky to have avoided a lot of marquee evangelical
endorsements. ‘‘Some of these people come with a lot of baggage,’’ he told me. ‘‘Cultivate them on their
terms and you can wind up selling your soul. If Huckabee wins in Iowa and keeps on going, they’ll have no
choice but to seek him out on his terms.’’

In fact, that already seems to be happening. On the day Tim LaHaye endorsed Huckabee, the governor also
won the support of Concerned Women of America (led by LaHaye’s wife, Beverly), 57 Iowa pastors and
Chuck Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center. On the ride to Central College, I mentioned
Dunn’s speculation to Huckabee. The candidate was noncommittal but not dismissive. ‘‘I’ve never thought

of it,’’ he said.

Possibly he hadn’t. But if Mike Huckabee, who has no profession except the ministry and no personal
fortune, doesn’t wind up on the government payroll next year, he will need a new job. He might just decide
he’d like to be the next Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell, a national evangelical leader who saves souls for
Christ as he counsels presidents and brokers political power.

Mike Huckabee was, by now famously, born and raised in Hope, Ark. His father was a fireman who didn’t
finish high school. His mother was, as he likes to boast, one generation removed from dirt floors and
outhouses. He attended the same kindergarten — Miss Marie Purkins’ School for Little Folks — as Bill
Clinton, who is nine years his senior. But Clinton left Hope when he was 7. Huckabee stayed.

‘‘I was a timid little guy when I was a kid,’’ he recalls. ‘‘I used humor as a defense; I became the class clown.
But deep inside I felt real vulnerable.’’ In the supremely macho culture of small-town Arkansas, he stood
out as a klutz. One of Huckabee’s lasting childhood memories is how, in seventh grade, the gym teacher put
him on a team of the worst basketball players and made him perform for the amusement of the entire class.
‘‘It was just to get others to laugh at us,’’ he says. ‘‘I remember how humiliated I felt, being singled out.’’

Words and music were Huckabee’s salvation. He started playing rock- ’n’-roll guitar at 11. He became a
champion public speaker and debater. At 14 he was hired as an announcer for the local radio station.
Huckabee grew up on stages and in studios.

And in a missionary Baptist church. His father brought him up with biblical spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-
child ferocity. ‘‘I feared him,’’ Huckabee told me. ‘‘Even though I know today that what he did, he did out of
intense love.’’

The harsh moral instruction took. If young Mike Huckabee was ever rebellious or difficult, there’s no record
of it. He preached his first sermon as a teenager, married his high-school sweetheart and went off to
Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. There he majored in religion, worked at a radio station and
earned his B.A. in a little more than two years. He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., before dropping out to work for the televangelist James Robison, who bought
him his first decent wardrobe and showed him how to use television. To this day, Huckabee regards Robison
as one of his role models in the art of communication, along with Ronald Reagan and the radio commentator
Paul Harvey.

In 1979, after four years of doing what Janet Huckabee wryly refers to as ‘‘missionary work in Texas,’’
Huckabee returned to Arkansas to serve as a congregational pastor and, eventually, head of the 490,000-
member Baptist State Convention. From this power base, he ran for the Senate against the incumbent Dale
Bumpers in 1992 and lost resoundingly. During that campaign, he advocated separating people with
H.I.V./AIDS from the general population, telling the Associated Press that ‘‘we need to take steps that
would isolate the carriers of this plague.’’ Questioned about this statement recently on ‘‘Fox News Sunday,’’
Huckabee said: ‘‘I don't run from it. I don't recant.’’ He also said that he still believes that ‘‘we were acting
more out of political correctness’’ in responding to the AIDS crisis. In 1993, Huckabee won a special election
for lieutenant governor. Then, in 1996, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was convicted on federal charges of fraud and
conspiracy in events relating to the Whitewater scandal.

What happened next is related in the first 31 pages of ‘‘Character Makes a Difference.’’ This is Huckabee’s
‘‘Profiles in Courage’’ (if J.F.K. had been writing autobiography). He gives the book to reporters as a
testament to his skill at crisis management. The crisis in question took place on July 15, 1996. Governor
Tucker was supposed to resign, and Huckabee was scheduled to be sworn in at 2 p.m. But at 1:55, Tucker
called to say that he had changed his mind. He wasn’t quitting.

This was ‘‘arguably the greatest constitutional crisis in Arkansas history,’’ Huckabee writes, as though his
state never seceded from the Union or had its capital’s high school forcibly integrated by the 101st
Airborne. Still, Tucker’s change of heart was a big moment. As Huckabee recalls it, the Arkansas State
Legislature fell into chaos. ‘‘Many of the old-time Democrats all but fell on the floor and ripped their
garments in twain. . . . Keeping your word is a sacred thing in Arkansas.’’ When it became clear that
garment-rending wouldn’t get Tucker to go away quietly, Huckabee took direct action. He addressed the
people in a statewide telecast, informing them that he was now in control; he threatened impeachment
proceedings against Tucker; state troopers were mobilized to protect the capital. All this activity had the
desired effect. Tucker re-resigned. In fact, the whole affair was wrapped up by the 6 o’clock news.

Huckabee went on to serve out Tucker’s term and two of his own. He was, by most reckonings, a
successful governor. He built roads, improved the schools, gave fine speeches and comported himself with
affability. Folks generally liked Mike. Which is why many were surprised when, at the end of October, the
University of Arkansas published a poll in which state voters, asked an open question about their
presidential preference, chose Hillary Clinton. She got 35 percent. Huckabee, less than a year out of the
governor’s mansion, tied Rudy Giuliani for second place with 8 percent.

John Brummett, the political columnist for The Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock, interprets the
University of Arkansas poll as referendum on Huckabee’s perceived lack of gravitas. ‘‘He did a lot of good
things,’’ Brummett told me. ‘‘But a lot of people down here see him as a pale imitation of Bill Clinton. People
doubt that he’s really presidential-caliber.’’

Brummett had his share of run-ins with Huckabee, whom he sometimes called His Huffiness. But he has a
soft spot for the governor. ‘‘A while back my dog died,’’ he told me. ‘‘When I wrote a column about it,
Governor Huckabee got in touch with me. He’s got a Labrador, like mine, named Jet. He offered me a
puppy from the next litter. I had no doubt that it was a sincere gesture. He’s the kind of man whose heart
can be touched by a pet.’’ Huckabee’s compassion made him popular with poor and minority voters.
‘‘Republicans usually get about 5 or 10 percent of the black vote in Arkansas,’’ Brummett told me, ‘‘but
there’s evidence, from precinct reports, that Huckabee got 30 percent, maybe more.’’ Fiscal conservatives
accuse Huckabee of being too compassionate, a traditional open-handed Southern politician.

The charge against him has been led by the Club for Growth, a group that promotes tax cuts and limiting
government spending, which Huckabee refers to as the Club for Greed. According to Nachama Soloveichik,
a spokeswoman for the Club for Growth, the governor is ‘‘a serial tax hiker and a big-government big
spender.’’ The columnist George Will has acidly mocked Huckabee’s ‘‘incoherent populism,’’ saying that his
candidacy ‘‘rests on serial non sequiturs: I am a Christian, therefore I am a conservative, therefore
whatever I have done or propose to do with ‘compassionate,’ meaning enlarged, government is
conservatism.’’

There is some truth to the big-government, big-spender characterization, but it is also an exaggeration. As
governor, Huckabee raised some taxes and lowered others and left office with a state surplus of more than
$800 million. Huckabee’s answer to his opponents on the fiscal right has been his Fair Tax proposal. The
idea calls for abolishing the I.R.S. and all current federal taxes, including Social Security, Medicare and
corporate and personal income taxes, and replacing them with an across-the-board 23 percent consumption
tax.

Governor Huckabee promises that this plan would be ‘‘like waving a magic wand, releasing us from pain and
unfairness.’’ Some reputable economists think the scheme is practicable. Many others regard it as fanciful.
(For starters, it would require repealing the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.) In any case, the Fair
Tax proposal is based on extremely complex projections.

Huckabee does not have an impressive grasp of its details. When I suggested, for example, that consumers
might evade the tax simply by acquiring goods and services for cash on the black market, he seemed
genuinely surprised. Immigration has also been a tough issue for Huckabee among potential Republican
voters. Critics accuse him of being soft for allowing the children of illegals, educated in Arkansas, to apply for
public scholarship money.

According to Paul Greenberg, the editorial page editor of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, this approach is
a function of Huckabee’s Christian charity. ‘‘He sees them as ‘strangers in a strange land.’ ’’ Despite political
pressure, Huckabee hasn’t backed down from his belief that it is wrong to punish immigrant children for the
sins of their parents. On the other hand, there’s nothing in the Bible about giving strangers driver’s licenses,
a policy Huckabee has long opposed.

As a premillennialist evangelical, Huckabee also has no problem with enforcing the law, at the border or
anywhere else. ‘‘A person with a biblical worldview of human nature says humans are by nature selfish,’’ he
has written. ‘‘We are not basically good; rather, we are basically self-centered. . . . Only two things will
change this behavior: either our nature will be changed by a supernatural experience with God through
Christ, or we will fear the consequences of not doing the right thing.’’

Huckabee would prefer, of course, that people go the supernatural route, but he is also a law-and-order
man. Like his father before him, he (and his wife) administered corporal punishment to their three children.

Huckabee has been criticized by rival candidates for his role in the Wayne DuMond case, in which an
incarcerated rapist was paroled from prison in Arkansas and subsequently killed a woman in Missouri.
Governor Huckabee favored the parole. But attacking him as soft on crime won’t be so easy for his
opponents. Writing about capital punishment, Huckabee said, ‘‘I took my action with a sense of resolve, and
to this day I am confident that I did the right thing — ‘right’ defined against moral absolutes in the midst of
an imperfect world.’’ In fact, Huckabee is the only man in the race who has actually signed another human
being’s death warrant.

If there are flaws in Huckabee’s personal reputation, they center on the perception that he has a
preacher’s sense of entitlement. In blunt terms, he took a lot of gifts. In 1999, the first year as governor
that he was required by law to record their value, he listed 73 presents, including a pair of season football
tickets from the University of Arkansas, a guitar from the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, fishing and hunting trips,

a carved sculpture of Christ, a leather purse for his wife from Jennifer’s Dress Shop, a case of beef,
department-store gift certificates and the use of a Chevrolet. He was also given honorary membership to
Chenal Valley Country Club, the Little Rock Club, Pleasant Valley Country Club, the Country Club of Little
Rock, Maumelle Bass Club and the Old Fishing Club. Huckabee received ‘‘legal services’’ from a Fayetteville
attorney, Tom Mars, whom he later appointed director of the Arkansas State Police. Mars defended
Huckabee in a suit charging that he had improperly claimed $70,000 worth of furniture, intended for the
governor’s mansion, as a personal gift. (Huckabee eventually conceded the point, but the charge was later
dropped.)

As lieutenant governor, Huckabee established a corporation, Action America, to which people donated more
than $60,000. He used that money to pay himself for delivering inspirational speeches. Asked by the
Arkansas news media to disclose the names of donors, Huckabee declined. In all, Huckabee accepted and
reported upward of 300 gifts during his years in office, worth at least $150,000 and probably much more.
Some were received at a gift shower that was held for the benefit of the family.

‘‘The women who threw that shower were old friends of my wife’s,’’ he told me at the Olive Garden. ‘‘Local
journalists tried to make it look like we were gouging presents. I have no problem with honest criticism, but
that was just pettiness.’’

In his home state, Huckabee has a reputation for an elephantine memory for slights and criticism. ‘‘The
local cliché about him is that he is thin-skinned,’’ says Prof. Janine Parry, who teaches Arkansas state
politics at the University of Arkansas. ‘‘And he can be mean. The national press hasn’t seen much of that. So
far he’s kept it under control.’’

Huckabee, on one wellremembered occasion, banned an alternative newspaper, The Arkansas Times, from
the services of the governor’s press office. His usual weapon, though, has been his sharp tongue. Huckabee
is never profane — one of his first acts as governor was to ban swearing and inappropriate sexual remarks
by his staff — but he has a way of expressing himself that sometimes flirts with vulgarity. ‘‘Once he told a
group of journalists that I was constipated,’’ John Brummett recalls. ‘‘That was his way of saying I was full
of [expletive].’’

This fall, Huckabee demonstrated his style in an interview with The Washington Times. Assailing Hillary
Clinton for failing to denounce MoveOn.org’s attack on Gen. David Petraeus, he said, ‘‘If you can’t get your
lips off the backside of George Soros long enough to use those lips to say it’s wrong to declare a sitting
general . . . guilty of treason, how would you ever expect to have the support of the very military you might
have to send into deadly battle?’’

Huckabee often describes unpleasant tasks as ‘‘about as much fun as a colonoscopy.’’ He once told a
reporter from The Washington Post that his rock band doesn’t get women tossing their panties on the stage
because ‘‘given our demographics, we’re more likely to have old men throwing their Depends at us.’’

Self-deprecating humor is another Huckabee trademark, but the barbs have a way of winding up in
someone else’s hide. On the stump, he gets a laugh telling audiences that the five words Arkansas politicians
fear most are ‘‘Will the defendant please rise.’’ But it wasn’t Huckabee who got into trouble with the law; it
was his predecessors. In 2000, on the Don Imus radio program, Huckabee called his state ‘‘a banana

republic.’’ Some Arkansans thought it was funny. Others considered it an effort to ingratiate himself with a
national media figure by laughing at them.

And yet, despite what she sees as Huckabee’s mean streak, Professor Parry of Arkansas, who is a
selfdescribed liberal, considers Huckabee a good governor. ‘‘When he first came to office, people like me
were worried about the religious aspect,’’ she says. ‘‘And he is very orthodox on gays, guns and God. But he
knows there’s more than just these issues.’’

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, is a rock-’n’-roll shrine, the last venue played by Buddy Holly,
Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper before their plane went down in February 1959. When I pulled up there,
on the last Friday in October, the old-fashioned marquee read, ‘‘Mike Huckabee and Capitol Offense,’’ and
beneath that, in equally large letters, ‘‘The Thunder from Down Under.’’ Hillary or Mitt would never have
agreed to share a marquee with an all-male adult cabaret. They also wouldn’t have introduced a new phase
of their campaign at the site of one of the most famous crashes in American history. Luckily, Huckabee
didn’t have enough staff for conventional planning. The show that night had a $10 entry fee, $25 for
families. I sat at a round table near the dance floor next to a man with a crew cut and a booming voice who
matriculated at Regent University and whose daughter was a student at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
The crowd was white and in the throes of advanced middle age.

The band was tight that night, but the show started slowly. Only a few couples took the floor. A man who
looked like Dick Cheney did a sedate version of the Chicken with his wife, who also looked like Dick Cheney.
‘‘Get out there and dance,’’ Huckabee exhorted the crowd. ‘‘Let’s show the world that conservative
Republicans can have as much fun as anybody.’’ Huckabee, I later learned, doesn’t dance himself, or even
move around onstage. He must be one of the few guys of his generation who didn’t join a band to meet girls.

The candidate was in high spirits. The campaign, he announced, had taken in more money in the last week
than in the previous few months. He was presented with a fishing rod as a gift, and he observed that he
believed a man should go to church once a week and fishing once a week. Several times he declared the Surf
to be ‘‘sacred ground.’’

If there was magic there, it was working. Three days later, the Hawkeye Poll of the University of Iowa was
published. Huckabee had 13 percent, in a virtual tie with Rudy Giuliani for second place, behind Mitt
Romney with 36. At that point, the Huckabee bandwagon didn’t seem all that amazing to Iowa veterans.
‘‘Actually, it is pretty straightforward,’’ said Prof. David Redlawsk, director of the University of Iowa’s
Hawkeye Poll. ‘‘About 45 percent of the 85,000 or so Republican caucus voters are evangelical Christians.
Roughly half of them automatically vote for the most socially conservative candidate in the race, and it looks
like they have decided that’s Huckabee. The other half can be won over, too — if they think he’s electable.’’

Three weeks later, Redlawsk revised his estimate. He thought Huckabee might actually win. He even
wondered if Huckabee might be peaking too soon. The Iowa caucus doesn’t really decide anything, not even
convention delegates. It’s a media event, a momentum-builder for the candidate who is judged to exceed
expectations. ‘‘If he continues to lead in the polls until Jan. 3, he could find himself in the position that a
narrow win is interpreted as a loss,’’ Redlawsk cautioned.

Money remains a problem. At the start of November, Huckabee set an online fund-raising goal of

$2,067,521, and he barely made it, despite all the buzz around his candidacy. Compare him with Ron Paul,
who raised more than $4 million on the Internet in one day in October, while still lingering in the single
digits in both national and early primary state polls.

‘‘Huckabee’s voters are people who tithe,’’ a professor at Liberty University told me. ‘‘People who give 10
percent of their income to the church don’t usually have money left over for political donations.’’

Huckabee, who tithes himself, agrees. There is big evangelical money out there, of course, but so far he
hasn’t been on the receiving end of it. In the first three-quarters of this year, his campaign’s largest
individual bundler was Stephens Inc., a Little Rock investment-banking firm that anted up about $35,000.
Oddly, one member of the Stephens family, Jackson T. (Steve) Stephens Jr., has donated more than $1
million to the Club for Growth and is on its board of directors. The governor declined to discuss the matter,
the only time in our dealings when I got a ‘‘no comment.’’

Huckabee, like the other candidates, has yet to report his campaign’s gross income from the last quarter of
2007, but judging from his Iowa operation, it couldn’t be much. On the first Sunday afternoon in December,
the very day that Huckabee took the lead in the Register poll, I stopped by his Des Moines headquarters.
The place is about the size of Floyd’s Mayberry barbershop and not as busy. Janet Huckabee was there,
decking the walls for Christmas. A few young staff members and volunteers sat at phones that didn’t ring. I
came in with Steve Penland, a burly man in a Marines baseball cap who wanted to know if Huckabee was
planning to repeal Nafta. This is a big deal in Iowa, but no one in the office, including the resident ‘‘issues’’
man, had any idea where the candidate stood. (I asked Huckabee the next day; he’s for keeping it.) Penland
walked away from the exchange a dissatisfied customer, although he did get a holiday mint from Janet
Huckabee.

As Mike Huckabee was being interviewed by Harry Smith of ‘‘The Early Show’’ at Central College, a few
blocks away, in downtown Pella, the P arliament of Dutch Iowa was convening. Pella is a little town founded
160 years ago by immigrants from the Netherlands, and they built their American home in the image of the
old country, windmills, a canal and all. In’t Veld Meat Market, known locally as the Baloney Shop, is a local
institution where the Parliament gathers. It is a daily meeting of elders, who range in age from early
retirees to Tony Tysseling, who turns 100 next June and drove himself to the meeting, as he does every
morning. The group has one conversational rule: no politics and no religion. But they agreed to make an
exception for a stranger from New York.

The Parliament is not what you would call polarized. Only one man (they were all men, except for one
woman who said that she was just there keeping an eye on her husband) admitted to being a Democrat.
They razzed Tony Tysseling for having once voted for F.D.R. ‘‘I voted for Hoover the first time, though,’’ he
said in selfdefense. ‘‘Hoover was an Iowa boy.’’ The others nodded. Some of them voted for Wendell Willkie
or Tom Dewey or Ike. Others converted to the Republican cause 20 years earlier, when Pat Robertson ran
in the caucus. Robertson got 25 percent in 1988, roughly where Huckabee was now showing in the polls.

‘‘I like the sound of Mike Huckabee,’’ one man said. ‘‘I don’t know much about him, but he seems like he’d
fit in this community.’’

‘‘He’s not too far East,’’ said Leo Nikkel.

‘‘Jan. 3 is the Orange Bowl,’’ noted Eldon Schulte, who played linebacker for the Chicago Bears in the early
’60s. ‘‘Same day as the caucus.’’

‘‘Lot of people may not vote,’’ said a man at the end of the table.

‘‘Lot will,’’ another said. It was as close as they were going to get to an argument.

Finally I called the vote, reading out names as the elders raised their hands shyly. One vote for Mitt
Romney. One for Rudy Giuliani. Nine for Mike Huckabee, and the rest unwilling to express an opinion.
Casey Van Weelden summed up local sentiment: ‘‘Huckabee’s a moral man. He’s a preacher. And he lost a
hundred pounds. He’s going to do all right in Iowa. What I don’t know is how he’s going to go with the rest of
the country.’’

Neither does Huckabee. His Nascar strategy is, at best, a long shot. He doesn’t have many troops in New
Hampshire, or the money to campaign simultaneously in more than 20 states for Super Tuesday. And there
is always the possibility that the sometimes hypersensitive governor will crack under the pounding of his
primary opponents. But even if his presidential prospects do dim, Huckabee could be a natural for the No. 2
slot, especially for Giuliani, who could use both an evangelical and a Southerner on the ticket. And Huckabee
plays well with others. ‘‘If the candidates held a greenroom Mr. Congeniality contest, Huckabee would win
in a walk,’’ an aide to one of his opponents told me.

Of course, Huckabee swears he isn’t interested in second place. Could he be tempted? As the Republican
consultant Mike Murphy says, ‘‘Vice presidents become presidents.’’ Huckabee, who inherited the
governor’s office from his boss, is well aware of this means of accession. Or he might wait for another shot.
‘‘Mike’s only 52 years old, much younger than the other candidates,’’ his adviser Dick Dresner told me. ‘‘He
can look past this race to 2012 or beyond. With the national exposure he’s getting this year, he could be a
real factor in the G.O.P. for a long time.’’

Correction: January 13, 2008

An article on Dec. 16 about Mike Huckabee misstated his academic credentials. He majored in religion at
Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., not speech and communications. Speech was his minor.

                                                Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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