In this day and age in which nothing much happens in America without us all being able to see it via a video on the Internet, I caught good ol’ Mike Huckabee’s TV ad telling the folks of Iowa that they should forget politics for the moment.
What’s reallyimportant in this season, he said in mellifluous, sermon-practiced tones and with a look of deep sincerity in his eyes, is the celebration of the birth of Christ. While I think that’s a wonderful sentiment in and of itself, it’s also a reflection of Huckabee the huckster, of someone using religion to further his own interests.
Clearly, he didn’t make the ad just as a way of encouraging faith and fellowship among Iowans, but as a way of selling himself to Christians as someone who shares their beliefs and therefore deserves their support in the coming caucuses. If he really wanted to give Iowans a respite from his politics, why didn’t he just shut up until after Christmas? That would have done the trick.
But this Baptist minister’s no-holds-barred mixture of religion and political purpose appears to be paying off because, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, he has come to have a large lead in Iowa, and much of it is said to come from evangelical Protestants and people who attend church regularly. There is nothing wrong with aligning with such groups on issues, but I for one cringe at the gross irreverence of exploiting Jesus for the sake of votes.
I also cringe at Huckabee’s populist politics, which supposedly put Main Street ahead of Wall Street, but actually put ignorance and control above enlightenment and freedom.
Liberty can scare people, and the semi-socialist answers of the welfare state can calm their nerves, but then we have history. And what it teaches us is that overly big government fed constantly by higher taxes and reaching out with ever more programs, regulations and restrictions finally grinds opportunity to a speck, while freedom — free markets, free trade, human energies breaking loose from such encapsulation — provides prosperity, and something else, too: a dignity that says we are capable of making our own way in life without Washington forever intruding.
The question becomes whether any Republican candidate can stave off Huckabee’s quest for the party’s nomination, and one possibility, Rudolph Giuliani, now appears to be fading as a consequence of too much bad publicity concerning his private life, business dealings and judgment about someone in whom he had placed trust.
Hope survives, however, in Mitt Romney, whose extraordinary, problem-solving, intellectual capacities no one should doubt. He is a whiz, as demonstrated by his taking charge of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City when the games faced a $300 million deficit and turning that into a $100 million profit.
Huckabee could probably not have done that, or been a CEO reversing the fortunes of failing companies. Romney’s intelligence seems to have burst through in virtually everything he has done in life, which is not to say that’s enough to qualify him for the presidency. But there are no serious doubts about his character or his political competence. On the issues, he sides with sanity, with positions likely to maintain a strong, vigorous, free America.
One hopes that the Romney speech on religion helped Americans see there is nothing in his Mormon faith that would result in untoward policies, just as one also hopes that Christians and non-Christians alike will come to see that Huckabee, for all his charm, is misusing faith and that the policies he favors are scary.
Examiner Columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at [email protected]
