Michael Corleone, Mike Huckabee, Uncle Remus (Not pictured: Tom Friedman) My parents were enormous admirers of the child-raising techniques of B.F. Skinner. Stuck as I was in a Skinnerian box until the age of 30, beloved childhood figures like Uncle Remus are therefore unfamiliar to me. I extend my most sincere gratitude to the dozens of readers who emailed me to explain Mike Huckabee’s reference to America as “Brer Fox” and Osama bin Laden as “Brer Rabbit.” It all makes perfect sense to me now. Elsewhere on the Huckabee foreign policy front, one of his most trusted foreign policy advisors has jumped ship. A week ago, Huckabee claimed conservative Frank Gaffney as one of his foreign policy advisors along with the New York Times’ Tom Friedman. Apparently, the Huckabee-Gaffney relationship isn’t particularly tight. In a radio interview with my friend Hugh Hewitt, Gaffney expanded on his role in the Huckabee campaign after Hugh played a tape of Huckabee saying, “We haven’t had diplomatic relationships with Iran in almost thirty years, most of my entire adult life. And a lot of good it’s done. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling, or even a friend, it’s impossible to resolve the difference to move that relationship forward. Well, the same is true for countries.” “I think that’s cockamamie,” Gaffney began, “and in fact, I had an hour and a half, I think, conversation with Governor Huckabee a couple of months ago over breakfast, and this was one of the main points on which I tried to educate him, that this is not a sibling that you just aren’t having a good time with. This is a country run by megalomaniacs bent on an apocalyptic outcome, who believe that bringing about a world without America is their god-given obligation. And you know, just talking with them, you know, can’t we all get along, Rodney King style, is not a prescription for a serious foreign policy, I’m afraid.” With Gaffney apparently no longer on the team, Huckabee’s foreign policy advisory committee apparently exists of Michael Corleone, Uncle Remus and Tom Friedman. Hey – at least he’s not relying on Brent Scowcroft.
