Bravo!
Mike Huckabee was very good on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. He is at his best in this stage of first impression, since glibness and a kind of unconventional, expansive conservatism are his strong suits. His shortcomings on ethics, petulance, thin-skinness and hyperbole can only be learned via observation and experience over time. Yes, Stephanopoulos asked about critics, but only from the conservative side among those who don't like Huckabee's big-government record in Arkansas. Those actually play to Huckabee's appealing unconventional side, making him appear a fresh difference. He can far better answer them than the more personal criticism back home in Arkansas about gift-receiving and hard drive-crushing and petty huffiness. Anyway, I have to say I had this moment of premonition that we were watching a Republican vice presidential nominee. I saw Huckabee talking circles around Hillary's running mate, who looked kind of like a morphing of Evan Bayh and Bill Richardson, in a veep debate. One other thing: Stephanopoulos mentioned only fleetingly that he'd seen polls showing Hillary beating Huckabee in Arkansas. "On any given day," Huckabee replied, adding he thought he would beat her. Ernie Oakleaf's poll showing her up on him in Arkansas, 49-36, last August shows a maximum lead reflecting generic Democratic advantages, subject to erosion through negative attacks casting the Democrat as a cultural liberal unacceptable to white rural Arkansas. That's the essence of Arkansas politics right there.