Redstate

By BelisariusVII Posted in Archived — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

After the rant which I posted on Wednesday night (1/30), I had a chance to decompress on Thursday and today. The wife and I saw Mike and Janet Huckabee on Thursday evening for about 10 minutes in between a press conference and a conference address to about 1,000 pastors in San Diego. It was not a time I spent peppering him with my own questions, the media had done enough of that. We just enjoyed reminding him of our original meetings with him in the early days of his political activity.

It was November 1991, when he had just started as a senatorial candidate in Arkansas, talking at one of the earliest of Christian Coalition conventions in Virginia Beach, when we were the second such chapter coordinators in all of Houston, and when Ralph Reed drove a Mazda and was just getting his first victories in the Virginia legislative elections. The biggest speaker was, of all things, Vice-President Dan Quayle. We sat at a banquet table on a Saturday night in the "Road to Victory" Seminar, and chatted away like brand-new-old-friends for almost four hours, trying not to laugh while watching the keynote speaker, the late Rep. Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan, trying to inspire patriotism by reciting the entirety of the lyrics to "God Bless the USA." (God rest him, he was a good guy who would sadly lose to a pro-abort woman the next year after 26 years in office).

I am unconcerned about the fact that I am now become a shill for Huckabee in relating to you how we just knew, in a crowd full of office-holders, candidates, and movers and shakers, that this man was different. We met him at the Road to Victory candidates' forum, held late afternoon, to a crowd of less than a hundred, where he spoke as one "evangelical" candidate among about 20. The crowd paid more attention to several candidates than to Mike, none of whom are in anybody's present-day mental Rolodex, an oversight which, in retrospect, was certainly strange.

I have to admit, that, as much as anything else I remembered about him, I found startling how truly comfortable he was with himself. We talked about our respective Arkansas educational backgrounds: he went to Ouachita Baptist University, I to Harding University (Church of Christ). When I told him that I was a graduate of Regent Law School in its former life at Oral Roberts University in the 80s, he poked good-natured fun with me about how a good ol' Texas boy from the "One True Church", could have gone so wrong in hanging out at "ole' Holy Roller U." I jokingly told him I had become a heretic, and that there was no hope for me, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit had ruined me forever. He showed his ecumenism on that issue by saying that, as a recent President of the Arkansas Baptist Convention, he nonetheless didn't think that the Holy Spirit took a vacation when the canon of Scripture was completed.

He listened patiently as I described the struggles I had in my solo law practice. He talked about the struggles he had as a young pastor in a successful attempt to encourage me. He enjoyed being a pastor, and a successful one. His departure from the spiritual ministry into politics was not a mask for frustration or disillusionment, either in his faith or his calling. Gail and I got the clear sense that, he was making this change in his life from preaching to politics because a Master above any of us simply said for him to do so, and he was just going to obey. He wasn't upset about leaving the ministry either, but rather excited about the new road the Lord had laid for him.

The impression I clearly got, his much greater weight then aside, was the same thing everyone is seeing now. Pastor-now-Governor Huckabee was simply a man at peace with himself. He was just displaying the virtues that you would, in a burst of idealism, expect to see in a person with a strong relationship with the Lord Jesus. The immediate admiration we had for him continued even after lost contact with him for 16 years, all because of the indelible effect he made on us.

I am writing all this for a very important reason: there is simply nobody else who has this kind of pure, unadulterated unflappability, that joie du vivre, making you absolutely sure that no matter the circumstances, Mike Huckabee would always have a good joke, a certainty of what to do next, and a keen sense of command of the setting. You could trust him---implicitly, to lead you where you need to go. The only other statesman who had that same ability was Reagan.

That leads me to my primary point. The next President of the United States is going to have to have all of those keen attributes and more. Whether we like it or not, whether Mike believes it or not, America is going to enter a new war, a real one, much bigger than the actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. We will need someone who is not a knee-jerk reactor to events such as in Iran, someone who remembers that being a conservative and a patriot doesn't mean that when Iran has the nuclear missile we start bombing city centers in Tehran and Isfahan, certainly not in a nation where the people loathe their leaders, and have a great support and admiration for the United States.

At the same time, it is serendipitous that Governor Huckabee is proposing the buildup of U.S. armed forces budget to 6% of GDP. That, in raw terms, would cause our armed forces to morcoe than double. There may be a Russian or Chinese conflict coming to a theater near you, and you'll be ready for anything.

I just don't see the issue of our caution in dealing with the criminal and deadly government of Iran as a detraction from Governor Mike's capability to lead. Indeed, he sounds like the nice guy with the 8th degree black belt (Chuck Norris?)--you know he can easily kill you, but instead he is a complete gentleman, and a truly decent and compassionate man.

But think he'll "go wobbly" on Iran? Does he have the resolve to lead the U.S. and the world to victory in a world war that I believe is inevitable? I believe Mike Huckabee does.

I'll share about his military plans later.

Hasta al pronto.