Why Huckabee matters

Here's an interesting analysis by WaPo's Dan Balz of Huckabee's closing-round Iowa speech, which Balz, a veteran political reporter, says is unlike anything he's ever heard in politics. Excerpts from the Balz analysis. Boldface mine:

Most candidates in the final days before a crucial election offer a vision of what their leadership would mean to the lives of ordinary people. They include lists of issue priorities of the kind Hillary Clinton offers. They can wrap policy with an inspirational frame of the type Barack Obama presents or sound a call to arms in the way John Edwards is doing. They can identify a single issue to embody a candidacy, as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have done with Iraq and terrorism.

Huckabee's was strikingly different. For starters, it was remarkably short on policy. Oh, he touched on issues like energy and health care and immigration and he talked about gridlock in Washington and the corruption of big money in politics. But all of these points seemed incidental to the broader message of the speech.

Huckabee's speech was long on values. It was personal and conversational and, not surprisingly, given what he has shown in debates, often quite humorous. He filled the speech with stories about himself and his family.

Some were tender and touching, especially one about a visit with his daughter to Yad Vashem, Israel's holocaust museum that concluded with what, at age 11, she wrote in the book upon leaving the museum: "Why didn't somebody do something?" Others reflected less positively on his family, including a father whose "spare the rod, spoil the child" philosophy left a deep impression on Huckabee.

But all of them conveyed an underlying message of morality and responsibility that underscored why Huckabee's rise has been fueled by a desire on the part of Republican voters for a candidate who is both socially conservative and personally authentic.

Huckabee was openly critical of his own party and suggested a victory in Iowa would shake the rafters of the GOP. "I love this country and I love it more than I love the Republican Party," he said. "The Republican party needs to be changed. There are some people who aren't that fond of me for saying it.... They want the right and the left to keep fighting, Democrats and Republicans, the liberals and the conservatives."

He also appealed to the audience to upend the GOP establishment by supporting him next Thursday. "A week from tonight, you have an opportunity to do something completely different that would utterly confound the political ruling class in this country," he said, saying a victory would "shock with seismic energy" the political foundations of his party.

Balz concludes:

His performance was the work of a politician who no longer should be underestimated by anyone in his party.

Balz's analysis puts me in mind, once again, of the 2006 political strategy book "Applebee's America," co-authored by leading Democratic and Republican strategists. Check this passage:

Great Connectors like Presidents Bush and Clinton adapt to their times. They also realize that tactics do not win elections. Gut Values do. Cutting-edge strategies are useful only when they help a candidate make his or her values resonate with the public. For all their faults (and they had their share), Presidents Bush and Clinton knew that their challenge was in appealing to voters' hearts, not their heads. We heard this countless times: "Sure, he had sex wiht an intern and lied about it, but he cares about me and is wowrking hard on my behalf." And this: "The Iraq war stinks and his other politices aren't so hot, but at least I know where he stands."

Even as the war in Iraq grew unpopular in 2004, President Bush's unapologetic policies seemed to most voters to reflect strength and principled leadership -- two Gut Values that kept him afloat until mid-2005, when he lost touch with the values that had gotten him re-elected. Even after lying to the public about his affair with a White House intern, President Clinton never lost his image as an empathetic, hardworking leader -- the foundation of his Gut Values Connection.

Both presidents understood that the so-called values debate runs deeper than abortion, gay rights, and other social issues that are too often the focus of the political elite in Washington. Voters don't pick presidents based on their positions on a laundry list of policies. If they did, President Bush wouldn't have stood a chance against Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004. Rather, policies and issues are mere prisms through which voters take the true measure of a candidate: Does he share my values?

Dowd, Sosnik and Fournier go on to say that to those who wonder why people vote against their "self-interest" (that is, why they vote Republican instead of Democratic), the answer is because people deep down want a leader whom they believe reflects their own values, even in spite of his policies. The authors write: "Today, two Gut Values dominate the political landscape. Success will come to any leader who appeals to the public's desire for community and authenticity."

Now, if that's true, that would explain a lot about Huckabee's surprising rise, and his unusual speech. He apparently intuits that voters are going to be moved mostly on the question of, "Does this candidate understand me, and empathize with me?" It's not a question of therapeutic "I feel your pain" politics. Ronald Reagan wasn't a goopy pol, but most people felt they knew where he stood, and he stood more or less where they did. Huckabee is speaking in the language of ordinary people, and he does so believably. He's telling people that he identifies with common-sense conservatism, one that identifies more with Main Street than Wall Street. He's speaking to a sense among Republican voters that the party has forgotten to look out for the little guy, that community matters less to the party leaders than business interests. Whether that's a legitimate criticism or not is a fair question, but the point is he's talking about these things, and doing so believably.

Now, it could well be that Huckabee's own limitations make him an insufficient avatar of a new conservative politics (come to think of it, that's basically Jeremy Beer's complaint about my book). But I do believe that the kind of conservatism he stands for is the coming thing on the Right. If he doesn't make it to the nomination, he's going to be formidable in 2012 (assuming a Democratic win in '08), after he's had four years to study and polish his critique.

My guess is that two unpredictable news events will help determine whether or not Huckabee sinks or swims over the next month: 1) whether or not Pakistan blows up, and 2) the economic uncertainties over the credit crisis. If Pakistan's woes dominate the headlines, it's bad for Huck, and good for McCain. If bad economic news stays on the front page, it's good for Huck, especially if he pounds away on the Main St.-vs.-Wall Street theme.

But rounding back to Balz's main point, it strikes me that Huckabee is an instinct politician who is making a gut values connection with Republican crowds. This should have been obvious as far back as this summer, when the cash-and-organization-poor candidate very nearly won the Iowa straw poll on the strength of his oratory alone. But a lot of us -- well, nearly all of us -- in the news media missed it, because hey, what chance can a flat-broke Baptist preacher from Arkansas have against this Republican field anyway?