"The Political Gods Are Angry This Morning, My Friend"
"Mike Huckabee was one of those freakish combinations of ruthless cunning and hapless amateurism -- a political embodiment somewhat akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald's maxim that "the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
But alas, Mr. Huckabee is now failing that test. For a while, his cunning had the edge, as his aw-shucks amateurism served to soften the former's steely lethality. He then, however, began blending and bollixing the two -- the "two opposing ideas," or, in his case, the two approaches -- and is now burying his campaign in the footnotes of lost, forgotten and hopeless causes.
He still retains the combination, but it has evolved -- through the most unintelligent of designs -- into one of hapless cunning and ruthless amateurism.
Poor Ed Rollins, the brilliant GOP strategist recently hired by the Huck to conjure order out of chaos, just as he was hired to do by the clinically pixilated Ross Perot back in '92. At least Perot had money, which in politics is more important than Huckabee's God, but he lacked in equal portions to Huckabee the good sense to listen to Rollins.
In my political book, Rollins is God. If I were a candidate and Ed told me to literally bark like a seal for the press corps the next morning and he would explain his reasons later, I'd do it. The man is a breathing calculator of political cunning, and the fact that Huckabee would hire him only to ignore him shows just what an Amateur Hour the Huck determined his campaign should be.
I am referring, of course, to the instantly famous debacle of yesterday, in which the Arkansas governor announced to a giggling horde of reporters that he was cancelling a negative-ad buy against that other godly governor, Mitt Romney.
"I pulled the ad. I do not want it to be run at all," said Huck, who then proceeded to run it, so the cameras could capture it, so the networks could air it.
The ad was blistering, though perhaps not as radioactive as Lyndon Johnson's Daisy spot, which also lived on through its network half-life of controversy. It charged Romney with being "dishonest" -- a charge Huckabee reiterated in his press conference -- and spanked him as well for being soft on gun control, the death penalty (the East-coast klutz never executed anyone, presumably to God's dismay), abortion and taxes.
As the Washington Post phrased it, "Rollins stood uncomfortably to the side as Huckabee renounced what Rollins had helped produce for $30,000 the day before. But Huckabee defended Rollins at the news conference, saying that he was staying on as a top adviser." Why, only God and Ed Rollins know.
When you watch the video of the dazzling flop of a press conference (contained in the link provided), you can see why Rollins "stood uncomfortably" by. Huckabee's performance was one of splendidly transparent sleaze -- a meretricious show of the governor's utter conflation of ruthless cunning and hapless amateurism, drowning in the same nouns with adjectives reversed.
It was an embarrassment, an insult, an affront to the joy of political disembowelment.
A wise pol doesn't order a hit, then publicly cancel the contract, explaining that he's just too goddamn decent to do what needs to be done, which he's going to preview for you anyway. It violates the immutable laws of political hatchetry. It warps the spacetime continuum's constancy of cherished insincerity, not to be molested by the needless pull of insincere decency. It upsets the political gods.
It also seems clear that even Huckabee hears the thunder. He's already weaseling the claim that placing in Iowa would be as good as a win, and he's gettin the hell out of Dodge and fleeing to California tomorrow for Jay Leno -- "a virtually unheard-of move on the day before the caucuses." Then comes the secular crush of New Hampshire, and by South Carolina he likely will have withered into that footnote.
Oh, how the Almighty are falling. And it further seems clear that Jesus, in a pinch, is willing to reconsider his divine blessing."
