Watching the current line up of GOP presidential contenders is dismaying for anyone who places value on intellect and reasoned thought. Romney is try to "out Gore" Al Gore's disastrous campaign in 2000 where Gore seemed to be someone different at every event as he tried to please everyone all of the time and ended up looking like he believed in nothing. Meanwhile, Perry, Bachmann and Santorum are clinically insane in my view. That leaves Jon Huntsman as the lone non-crazy person who may actually have some central beliefs. His sanity inaccurately makes him look moderate compared to the fire breathing Bible beaters - something that makes him unacceptable to the untethered elements that now dominate the GOP party base. A piece in American Conservative has an interesting profile of Huntsman that underscores his strong conservatism, but also underscores his rational approach to issues. In particular, he seems to understand the changing global economy and the fact that the USA must change its game plan to remain a leading word power. Retreating into a quasi-Medieval mindset which rejects science as espoused by Perry and Bachmann is not the solution. Here are some article highlights (I recommend reading the whole lengthy article):
HANOVER, NH—Jon Huntsman walked out of the rear door of a Dartmouth auditorium. His head swiveled as he looked for the black SUV that will take him to his next stop. He had just given a speech emphasizing his claim that the future of America will not be decided on a battlefield in remotest Afghanistan but along the trade routes of the Pacific. The applause had barely died down in the hall as Huntsman exited into the quiet streets of Hanover. He took one second to sigh. He had just launched “Phase Two” of his campaign, and it was a success.
The reboot couldn’t come fast enough. Huntsman had made no dent in the polls since his launch in June. Instead, the avalanche of prestige media mash-notes to his campaign had the effect of raising expectations ridiculously high and smothering him with the labels “soft” and “moderate” in an era when Tea-caffeinated primary voters are looking for “hard” and “right.”
Huntsman may be uncomfortable in the ideological sweathouse that is the conservative movement. He may be diplomatic when the right is dyspeptic. But his candidacy offers conservatives two very tantalizing possibilities: a break with the Bush legacy on foreign policy and the chance to move their policy prescriptions off the Tea Party’s placards and into the center of our political debate. Huntsman’s record shows that conservative politics can triumph not just through conflict but also by concord.
But for now he has to win by making contrasts. At Dartmouth he had two objectives: define his mission and define his opponents, all while maintaining his genial image. “I’m driven to run for president… because I can’t stand the thought that we’re about ready to hand down the greatest nation that ever was to your generation less good, less competitive, saddled with debt, less hopeful than the country I got,” he said to the crowd. Mission one accomplished.
Huntsman can’t check the whole list, it’s true. He has Barack Obama’s 2008 position on gay rights: he is for same-sex civil unions but not marriage. He has John McCain’s latest position on immigration: he supports comprehensive reform and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens—conservatives call this amnesty—but he demands that the border be secured first. Yet the means to do that don’t excite him. He told a town-hall audience recently, “I mean, for me, as an American, the thought of a fence to some extent repulses me, because it is not consistent with … the image that we projected from the very beginning to the rest of the world.”
Huntsman also riled conservatives on some environmental issues. He has praised Nixon’s creation of the EPA.
Huntsman has reason to think his record compares favorably with those of his rivals. Unlike Romney, Huntsman’s state healthcare reform achieved more insurance coverage for residents without resorting to an individual mandate. Huntsman has never argued that he was more pro-choice than Ted Kennedy, as Romney did in his 1994 Senate race. And while Rick Perry’s Texas has 38 percent of all new American jobs created during the anemic recovery, the unemployment rate in Lone Star State has actually gone up. Because so many of the new jobs are low-wage, Texas’s debt has actually doubled under Perry. Huntsman’s Utah attracted larger companies and higher-paying jobs that helped the state recover from the recession more quickly than almost any other. The suspected RINO Huntsman passed Utah’s largest ever tax cut. Perry, who is casting himself as the beau ideal of the right, voted for Texas’s largest ever tax hike in the 1980s when he was an elected Democrat.
But where Huntsman really contrasts with his opponents is on foreign policy. . . . Huntsman isn’t about withdrawing from the world stage but reorienting our policy: “Why do we have so many military bases in Japan, we’re half a century after World War II? Why so many in Germany? Does it make sense for America to remain in these places?” Huntsman believes that other candidates are kidding themselves if they think defense budgets should be off the table when discussing the nation’s overspending.
Huntsman is most anxious about changing the mission in Afghanistan, America’s longest war. In a recent speech he leveled with the crowd: “It’s time to recognize the reality of what we’re up against in Afghanistan. It isn’t a nation-building exercise, it’s counter-terror [that we need],” he said, “You don’t need 100,000 boots on the ground and the expenses that it carries. You need intelligence-gathering capability, a special-forces presence, and help training the Afghan-national troops.”
When Huntsman brings back the subject of China, he finds his ground quickly. Does the Chinese government—which unlike the Soviet Union has been able to combine central planning with explosive growth—represent an ideological rival to the United States? “No,” he says, “If you disaggregate their current system you’d be hard pressed to say there is a driving ideology besides growth and success.” China believes it has a model that works for China and may work for other emerging countries, he says, but not for us.
He also contends that social and economic trends in China are coming to an extremely delicate moment. 500 million Internet users are online there, inflation rises, and at the next Party Congress nearly 65 percent of its 200 leaders are turning over. “It’s potentially incendiary,” Huntsman says. His campaign people constantly stress the importance of getting American policy in China right. “In last century you wanted a president who really understood Europe and Soviet Union,” says Ayres, “Now we need someone who understands China, India, Asia.”
But the challenge for Huntsman is whether the electorate can abide self-reflection and self-criticism. There is something deeper that undergirds Huntsman’s campaign rhetoric. It’s hinted at when he says that empires fall due to a “diminution in values at home,” or when he says he is running for president in part because his generation is about to hand over a country that is “less good” than the one they inherited. These are the words of a man who believes his country has grown decadent and soft. Without the rest of the stump speech to cushion them, they are startling to hear from a presidential candidate.
For Huntsman, the factionalism of our politics isn’t the sign of zealous conviction, but of insecurity. Promiscuous intervention abroad isn’t a sign of strength, but of national aimlessness and weakness. Perhaps the hard truth is that America’s deformed policies are a reflection of a deformed character.
Of course, the unspoken converse is that good leadership and good policy would have an invigorating effect on the national soul, and that is where Huntsman hopes to make his appeal. He couldn’t help but touch on these themes in his address to the College Republicans in Washington. “I don’t want you to become disillusioned,” he said, “I want you to believe in the system. Your generation is going to be part of the fix.”
Huntsman’s goals are less lofty. He sets policy not from above the human pile but from across the same table. He promises not transcendence but consensus. This is a modest vision of politics that makes the words conservative and moderate seem fresh again—and compatible. Now it’s up to the professionals to sell that on a bumper sticker.
I worry about Huntsman on social issues, but on many issues, I suspect he's right. In many ways he makes more sense that anyone else, including the current occupant of the White House.
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