Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he won’t base his decision to run on what the people who buy his books say. Huckabee ambivalent about W.H. run

The day the Gallup Organization confirmed Mike Huckabee’s status as the pollsters’ front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the former Arkansas governor was slouched in the back of his tour bus, somewhere between Harrisburg and Allentown, Pa., talking about the frustrations of not being taken seriously.

“I’m a very serious person,” he said. “I may not be dour, but I’m serious.”


A governor for 10 years and the winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2008, Huckabee should by all rights have a claim to be the early favorite for the Republican nomination. But former Gov. Mitt Romney, the candidate he bested in Iowa 2008 and for whom he does not attempt to contain his contempt, is riding high, credited by many Republicans as the best person to run against President Barack Obama in a down economy. And as Huckabee works his way through a 22-state tour for his new book, “A Simple Christmas,” he knows that he and the book will be almost entirely overshadowed by former Gov. Sarah Palin’s two-week barnstorming tour for her forthcoming memoir.

Palin is the party’s rock star.

“Some of the people who had excoriated me and really been very dismissive of me for views that I had taken, and labeled me anything from a populist to an ignoramus — the same people have been very defensive [of] and laudatory to Sarah Palin,” Huckabee noted, adding that he’d invited her to appear on his weekly Fox show but “could never get any contact.”

“I’m glad she’s getting the props — I know I’m not nearly as attractive,” he said with a guileless grin.

Huckabee is unceasingly pleasant and mild, even in relating his grievances. The same sense of humor is there, too. But so are an obvious frustration and a barely concealed bitterness, as well as the underlying question of whether Huckabee really wants to go through with this again or, instead, succumb fully to the showbiz side that he began polishing as a teenage disc jockey in Hope, Ark.

Gallup’s survey of Republicans found that 71 percent would consider voting for him, more than for Palin, Romney or others. The same survey found that he’s the only Republican whom even 50 percent of Americans say they think is qualified to be president.

What’s more, he is vastly outworking all of his potential rivals — even the ones who, as he noted, don’t have to work for a living and don’t need to work for a living. Like, just for instance, Romney, who merits 15 entries in the index of Huckabee’s recent campaign memoir, now out in paperback. (“Romney, Mitt: disrespectful attitude of; ... flip-flopping on issues; ... Iowa concession, lack of; ... as left of center; ... negative ads.”)

He compares Romney’s attempt to prove himself more conservative than his rivals to “the Kristen Wiig character on ‘Saturday Night Live’ — ‘I’ve been there, too; I’ve been there six times.’”

The Pennsylvania trip was part of a three-week book tour. But the grinding travel — Huckabee occasionally sleeps on one of the bus’s modest bunks —is par for the course for a man who practically lives on the road while he makes a career of his Fox talk show and his radio commentaries.

He said he considers these enterprises his “job” and the public for whom he’s in the process of signing thousands of books his “employer.” The public’s demographic, according to a casual canvass of his book signings, tends toward women of his age and older. It also includes pillars of the conservative base — veterans, conservative evangelicals.

“I watch your show. I love you and I will support you 100 percent,” said one woman in the Lancaster Barnes & Noble, where the line started forming three hours before Huckabee’s arrival and where staff members say they haven’t seen a crowd this big in years.

“I’d like to live to see you become president,” said another woman. “I like your dimple.” Huckabee, in his preacher’s uniform of a black suit, checked shirt and open collar is a heartthrob among a certain set.

The book tour is reminiscent of how he distinguished himself in 2008 — with the retail campaign, the Pizza Ranch get-togethers in Iowa and the debates, in which he came across as a real person.

Part of Huckabee’s authenticity has always been his struggle with his weight — he made his own diet, and anti-obesity campaigning, a cause as governor — and it’s been a losing battle for the past year. On the bus, he said something about protein shakes but opted for a compromise — salmon from Olive Garden — and snacked on some Auntie Annie’s pretzels. Understandably, he took New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s thinly veiled reference to the weight of his rival, Chris Christie, seriously, and he considers Christie’s reply that Corzine should “man up and call me fat” the “pivotal moment” of the campaign. But Huckabee had also thought of his own comeback for Christie: “I may be fat, but he’s incompetent. And I can lose weight.”

But authenticity isn’t enough, and he’s also been giving thought, and some effort, to the part that failed him in 2008: political organizing.

“It would have to be far more organized and extensive than last time,” he said. “I would not try to go out and operate without the financial support.”

He’s also been meeting, he said, with some of the evangelical and Republican leaders who rejected him before. “In some of their cases, there’s a very different attitude to me now,” he said.

But some attitudes don’t change. Huckabee met in the spring with Pat Toomey, then the president of the Wall Street-backed Club for Growth, which had attacked him during the 2008 campaign for raising taxes in Arkansas.

“It wasn’t very productive,” he said of the meeting. “I realized then that these guys are just what I thought they were — they’re pay for play, and they do it anonymously on behalf of people who don’t want to be known as the funders of these hit operations. I find that repulsive.”

Huckabee, who tells the well-wishers he hasn’t yet made up his mind about running, is as keenly aware of his own strengths as he is of possible weaknesses. Iowa, he said, won’t be as easy to skip as some supporters of his potential rivals have recently theorized.

“They do that at their own peril,” he said. “The hot political reporters are going to be in Iowa, and they’re going to cover who’s there because it’s the first thing. If you skip it, you’re going to be playing a game nobody’s watching.”

Later on the bus, Huckabee vanishes to the back to record his 12-minute radio commentary. It’s a much-soughtafter talk radio gig, the one vacated by the late, legendary Paul Harvey — desirable both because the commentaries air widely and because they, unlike a show, don’t require the host to be tied down to a studio for four hours a day.

The bus stops in Secaucus, N.J., and Huckabee carries his own bag over to Fox’s waiting Cadillac, which will take him into Manhattan. Huckabee installs himself in the back seat and logs on to a Citadel Broadcasting website to upload the digital audio file he just recorded.

And now he really sounds like he won’t run for president.

“A factor that I’ve got to look at is [that] it means walking away from what I’m doing ,” he said. “I’d have to completely walk away from it and not get it back — they’re not going to keep the seat warm for you. And the other thing: Not many of us can forgo an income for a couple of years.”

Huckabee expands on his theory that elected officials should be forced to resign their offices before running for another.

“One of the things that bugged me while I ran was looking around at all these people onstage who were senators and congressmen — I as a taxpayer was paying their health insurance and their salaries and a lot of their staff,” he said. “I was having to figure out how to make my house payment and pay my health insurance.”

Then there are the attacks. Huckabee reads everything written about him and asks his daughter to explain attacks on the obscurest blogs.

And President Barack Obama, he believes, will be a hard man to beat.

“Americans are not likely to dismiss a party after four years,” he said, noting how unusual that is in American history. “It just gives me a realistic understanding, when people act like this is going to be a cakewalk for Republicans.”

But what about all those people who, that day, had told him they’d be with him if he’d only run? he was asked as the Cadillac pulled up to his hotel, the Renaissance in Times Square (which is, incidentally, part of the Marriott empire, on whose board Romney sits).

“Some people will believe all the ya-ya that people will tell them,” he said. “It’s easy to get swept up into that — 10 people tell you you’re the next president, and the next thing you know you’re breathing it in and you’re out there. I can’t base a decision like that on the people who would stand in line for two hours to buy my book.”

With that, he was out of the car and into his hotel.