Informed Speculation

There are many, many reasons I could never support the modern Democratic party – their embrace of the unions that are killing our public schools and auto industry, their protectionist nonsense, and their general warmth towards big government spending (this is not to ignore the big government spending of some modern Republicans, the present administration included).

At the presidential level, I find modern Democrats (read: post-JFK) far too concerned with domestic policy that they have little control over (Congress and the courts have a far greater impact on the home front) and sometimes dangerously complacent on the foreign side of the ledger (this is not a blanket statement covering all Democrats, but a general tendency).  In foreign affairs, an unquestioning internationalism is sometimes every bit as scary as blinkered isolationism – for example, it can lead to absurdities like Jimmy Carter endorsing electoral atrocities in Venezuela.

It takes a smooth hand to handle foreign affairs, and strong leadership skills, and it helps to project a single voice.  For this reason, presidents are given a wide latitude in the conduct of foreign policy.  Thus, when a presidential candidate (and a Republican presidential candidate, at that) displays ignorance on basic knowledge of foreign affairs, and when said candidate is enjoying a bit of a run in the polls, I get very, very nervous.

Mike Huckabee is making a lot of people nervous, though, with statements like this (apologies for quoting in entirety, but it’s a short piece not given easily to excerpting):

In discussing the volatile situation in Pakistan, Mike Huckabee has made several erroneous or misleading statements at a time when he has been under increasing scrutiny from fellow presidential candidates for a lack of fluency in foreign policy issues.

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Mr. Huckabee’s comments on the situation in Pakistan were not the first time he has been caught unprepared on foreign policy matters. Early this month, after the release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Mr. Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the report, even though it had been widely reported in the news for more than 30 hours.

Now, we’re not talking ‘gotcha’ questions like who’s the president of Khazikstan, but rather, prominent news of the day.  Managing the dual challenges of Iran and Pakistan will be very much a part of the job duties of the next President, and are fair game under any reasonable scenario.

Bob Novak reports, however, on a private poll that shows Huckabee slipping:

While public polls show Mike Huckabee leading Mitt Romney in Iowa, a new survey of an oversized sample shows Huckabee slipping and no longer ahead of Romney.

A private corporate interest commissioned a phone bank survey of 15,000 Iowans who say they will attend Republican presidential caucuses Jan. 3. It showed Romney with 30 percent and Huckabee at 26 percent. Sen. John McCain was third with 12 percent and Rudy Giuliani fourth at 9 percent. Fred Thompson had only 1 percent, with slightly fewer votes than Rep. Ron Paul (also at 1 percent).

Numbers for both Huckabee and Romney dipped sharply when Iowans were asked their second choice. In contrast, McCain was the leading second-choice candidate for both Huckabee and Romney voters.

Unexpected late intervention by Bob Dole in the Iowa Republican caucuses confirms that Mike Huckabee may have blundered by assailing President George W. Bush’s “arrogant bunker mentality” in international affairs.

“Why have you joined the ‘Bush bashers’?” Dole asked in a letter to Huckabee that he made public. Dole, until now neutral in the 2008 contest, called Huckabee’s critique of Bush policy in Foreign Affairs magazine a “perfect example of 20-20 hindsight.”

Dole, who won the 1996 Iowa caucuses en route to the presidential nomination, told Huckabee that Iowans would not approve of his attack on Bush (who still gets 80 percent approval from Republicans). He concluded the letter with typical Dole humor: “P.S. I lost the General [election] in ‘96, so what do I know?”

There is no doubt that Huckabee is now a serious contender, but my gut feel is that he is going to suffer a three-pronged backlash from people (1) scared of his foreign affair snafus, (2) concerned about his conservative credentials on economic affairs, and (3) put off by his overt insertions of religion into the campaign…