The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

In addition to reading the excellent reporting James Antle has done on the record of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (who spoke at a Spectator Newsmaker Breakfast this morning that I unfortunately had to miss), readers ought to listen to those of us who actually covered the Huckster in Arkansas. I repeat what I have reported in numerous earlier blog entries, namely that Huckabee is a bit of a skunk in a rose garden. Not only is he not a fiscal conservative (as Antle has shown), but he has an ethical blind spot a mile wide. It's not that he is personally corrupt, but that he has the attitude that, in effect, his own rectitude automatically extends to everybody in his entire administration and that anybody who questions the ethics of any of his underlings is therefore a lying muckraker. Of course, not all his appointees have been so pure, yet Huckabee again and again would defend the appointees rather than defending the cause of ethical propriety. Once, he even sued the state Ethics Commission (!!!) -- not only a legally questionable move, but an incredibly stupid move politically. He also has ths thinnest skin of almost any politician I've ever covered, meaning the Washington press corps would surely cause him to fly off the handle in an utterly unproductive way.