Over on the Dallas Morning News blog, I note that my Dallas friend (and D Magazine publisher) Wick Allison gave a campaign contribution to Mike Huckabee, but asked for (and got it) back after Huckabee spoke at the anti-Catholic fundamentalist pastor John Hagee's church recently. Wick's a prominent Roman Catholic here in Dallas. But I found on FEC records that Wick had given $1000 to George W. Bush in 2000 -- six months after Bush spoke at anti-Catholic Bob Jones University. Why does Bush get a pass, but Huck doesn't?
The more important, and more general, question is why the Republican establishment is asked today by New Hampshire blogger Christopher Potter Stewart, who senses a more serious GOP double standard regarding Bush and Huck. Excerpt:
But in 2000, most of the same folks who are now trying to stop Huck by citing his "inexperience" quickly got behind George W. Bush's run for President.Why?
We don't personally dislike George W. Bush but let's be honest - In 1999 the sum total of George W's qualifications for President were 1. I'm a successful manager of a weak executive office (Texas), 2. I beat alcoholism, 3. I've found God, 4. I never really ran a successful business and 5. My daddy was President.
[snip]
But seriously, even folks who don't like Huck must (should) admit that Huckabee's qualifications to be President are at least as strong as Bush's were.So why did the GOP establishment that now slams Huckabee get so quickly behind Bush in 1999?
We think that if your answer (prominently) includes Bush's bloodline, Bush's money and his family's connections well, you're on to something.
Bush was connected to, and trusted by, Republican Party elites in ways that Huckabee isn't, and never will be. Traditionally, GOP voters have tended to defer to the party establishment's choices in these matters, making Republican presidential selection contests more orderly and predictable than Democratic ones. But this year is different. Republican voters seem to be pretty fed up with the GOP establishment, for various reasons, and as has been noted here and elsewhere, the old Reagan coalition is coming apart. The party establishment -- which includes, I think, conservative intelligentsia, media figures and think-tankers -- don't have a lot of credibility and influence this year, at least not remotely like what they used to have. Stewart's point about how the party establishment completely ignored inexperience in anointing Bush fils as presidential material, even as today they disdain the same qualities (or lack of qualities) in Huckabee, is an important one.
I say that in part because I've just written an editorial for tomorrow's News about how overrated foreign-policy experience is in selecting presidents. The last president we had who had meaningful foreign policy experience before coming to the White House was George H.W. Bush, and that availed him little in the 1992 election, when he was turned out of office by an Arkansas governor who paid more attention to domestic politics than the incumbent. I don't mean to diminish foreign policy expertise, but absent Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, and possibly John McCain, no presidential candidate of either party can boast having much of it. What matters more is the kind of experts the president surrounds himself with -- and in G.W. Bush's case, it's hard to see where the expertise and experience of others did him or the country a whole lot of good. And Ronald Reagan, who as a candidate was dismissed by the foreign policy establishment, including Republicans, as a crude cowboy totally out of his depth -- well, ask Mikhail Gorbachev about the judgment of that California cowboy.
Anyway: there are lots of reasons not to vote for Mike Huckabee. Any Republican who cites his lack of experience as one of them had better say in the next breath that he regrets having supported G.W. Bush for that reason, or he's a hypocrite.
(H/T: Andrew)
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I'd say foreign policy experience matters, but what matters more is foreign living experience. Foreign policy does not matter to terrorists. It doesn't help you learn how to deal with them. Foreign living experience does. Does it mean you get to please the "America is always right" crowd? No. But at least you know what the results of dealing with foreign dimplomats and VIPs really means for the people in foreign countries: pretty much nothing. This is why foreign aid goes missing so often (and why I tend to oppose it in general). We want to help the people, not realizing that the money is going directly into the pockets of the leadership. Foreign living experience (as opposed to foreign policy experience) lets us know that if we want to help the people (and really knock down the primary rationale for terrorism - oppression by us), we shouldn't be funding corruption, we should send teams of American workers in to build roads, infrastrcture, etc. That's what having a leader who had lived abroad could help us accomplish. And we'd actually be getting something for our money.
There is no experience of any value in dealing with foreign policy at the Presidential level because nothing else even comes close to having that level of responsibility.
I won't vote for Huckabee for a simple reason, he makes my skin crawl.
There is no experience of any value in dealing with foreign policy at the Presidential level because nothing else even comes close to having that level of responsibility.
Wow. So selecting a prez is a blind shot in every case?
How about someone like Eisenhower who commanded Allied troops in Europe, dealt with dozens of heads of states, etc?
How about Kissinger, not that he is or should be running.
Powell?
Why so many people shoot first and think afterwards?
Perhaps folks are more upset about showing up to speak with someone who can't see a difference between Islam and Catholicism and has a bunch of simply psychotic mistaken beliefs (the purpose of the crusades was to kill Jews?) than they are at someone speaking at a university that is named for a guy who a long ways back made a bunch of stupid charges against Catholics. (Stupid charges which really aren't that unusual-- my dad's family thinks the Pope will be the anti-Christ-- and I'd be shocked if a fundamentalist Protestant university DIDN'T consider Catholicism false. Kinda defines "protestant.")
How about someone like Eisenhower who commanded Allied troops in Europe, dealt with dozens of heads of states, etc?
Eisenhower is an exception that proves the rule. As Supreme Commander in Europe during the Second World War, his experience was unique. In an age of instant communications between governments, the Eisenhower model can't be repeated.
In any case, foreign policy experience doesn't matter. If it did, we'd have to elect Dick Cheney. But approaching foreign policy with an intelligent strategy or philosophy does matter. That's why Reagan's inexperience was not a liability.
My problem with Huckabee isn't his lack of Nixonian foreign policy experience, but simply the fact that he sounds utterly clueless about the world at large, as if he really weren't interested.
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