Huckabee's Not Ready for Prime Time

Ross is dead right if the biggest thing people remember about Mike Huckabee from Zev Chafetz' New York Times Magazine profile is the business about Mormons believing Jesus and Satan are brothers (it seems this is real Mormon doctrine) then Huckabee's getting off easy. What really comes away is that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He has no record on foreign policy issues, says his thinking is a mélange of Frank Gaffney, Tom Friedman, Duncan Hunter, and he once chatted with Richard Haas. So it'll be run-amok militarism, plus Friedman-style moralism, plus realpolitik.

Except, obviously, it won't. Huckabee's just kind of making stuff up.

Oddly, as Ross says, Huckabee actually seems perfectly qualified to be president by current standards: we elected a governor of Arkansas President as recently as 1992, and his tenure in office compares favorably with many of the major candidates. But "it's worth making a distinction between being qualified and being prepared" and Huckabee is woefully unprepared. It's not just that he lacks staff, though he does. Lots of people who don't have staffs have a better handle on this stuff than Huckabee does. He just clearly hasn't put any effort into preparing himself to answer serious questions about a whole range of areas of national policy. He's clearly not going to be elected president, so I won't call it a "frightening" lack of preparation, but it is kind of insulting to us, the American people, that he's done so little due diligence.