But he also suggested that one of the reasons he granted an interview about his political future is that he is still bothered about how his first presidential run ended — and he wants the respect he said he believes is due to somebody who performed better than more vaunted candidates and who remains popular with many conservatives.

“Let me show you some polling,” Mr. Huckabee said, brandishing a two-page memo about a survey his longtime pollster took this month suggesting that he was leading the Republican field in both Iowa and South Carolina. He boasted that such good numbers came at a time when “nobody has even talked about me being named” as a candidate.

Mr. Huckabee dismissed the notion that pride was a factor in his decision to float a possible campaign.

“Anybody who would run for any reason other than to win is an idiot,” he said. But he quickly warmed to a question about not getting credit for his skepticism about the health of the economy as he campaigned in the months before the 2008 stock market crash and financial meltdown.

“A lot of things I said that I was sneered at about turned out to be prophetic,” he said about the criticism he took from fellow Republicans over his focus on the working class during the 2008 campaign. “A year later I looked like a genius, but nobody ever said, ‘Huckabee was right,’ ” he said.

He seems intent on running only if he knows the experience will be unlike his last run, when he “was defined by my opponents,” he said. In that race, he had so little money to live on that he had to leave the campaign to give paid speeches.