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Jewish World Review
June 22, 2011
20 Sivan, 5771
Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Who is Jon Huntsman and where is he going? Even his campaign aides don’t seem to know.
At the former Utah governor’s presidential kickoff speech on Tuesday, campaign workers distributed — and then confiscated — press credentials misspelling the candidate’s first name as “John” instead of “Jon.” Those same credentials misstated the location of the event as New York rather than New Jersey — a symptom of a geographic confusion that became more pronounced later when reporters and campaign staff were directed toward a charter plane bound for Saudi Arabia rather than the intended destination of New Hampshire. People watching the Huntsman announcement on TV were unlikely to emerge with any clearer picture of the candidate. Huntsman began talking at 10:06 a.m. Fox News cut in after just four minutes, as the candidate was praising the “selfless armed forces.” MSNBC broke in seconds later, as Huntsman spoke about the “character that made the desert bloom.” CNN made it all the way to 10:12 a.m., ending its live coverage when the candidate referred to “the end of the American century.” All three cable networks had moved on before Huntsman got to the core of his message. “We will conduct this campaign on the high road,” vowed the candidate. “I respect the president of the United States. He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love. But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better president, not who’s the better American.” That is the essence of Huntsman’s appeal, and, by the caustic political standards of 2011, it is a radical proposition. Huntsman, who was until recently President Obama’s ambassador to China and yet who notably didn’t mention Obama by name in his kickoff speech, made a plea for “civility, humanity and respect” — the very qualities our political system seems to abhor. I wish Huntsman luck in this noble pursuit, but the high road almost always leads to political oblivion. For Huntsman to maintain his course all the way to the Republican presidential nomination would turn politics on its head. More likely, he will join other decent men — Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch — whose presidential campaigns were quickly forgotten. Early signs suggest Huntsman will do no better. Polls show upward of six in 10 Republicans don’t know enough about him to form an opinion. In Iowa, where Huntsman has said he will not compete, one poll found total support for Huntsman of one — not 1 percent, but one person. Huntsman’s would-be opponents are happy to fill in the blanks: Democrats point to his reversal on cap-and-trade for carbon emissions, conservatives complain about his support for civil unions, and the White House is trying to paint him as a behind-the-scenes moderate. To fight those impressions, the campaign will have to do more than put out videos of a Huntsman body double riding a motocross bike in the Utah desert, while soulful music plays and a disembodied voice attests that Huntsman played in a high school band and prefers “a greasy spoon to a linen tablecloth.” The soulful music resumed Tuesday morning at Liberty State Park, where Huntsman gave his announcement speech from the same location Ronald Reagan used in 1980. He and his improbably handsome family strolled across a lawn, processional style, while a sparse crowd of about 100 applauded. Huntsman, once an advance man for Reagan, still has not perfected the craft. The fierce wind forced him to hold down his papers with his left hand. He had to raise his voice to compete with airplane noise, helicopters and a boat horn. The TV cameras were, for the most part, at the wrong angle to capture the candidate with the Statue of Liberty in the background. The next stop brought more of the same. After the Saudi plane confusion in Newark (the campaign, CNN reported, blamed the Port Authority), the candidate arrived about an hour late for his speech in Exeter, N.H. He had swapped his jacket and tie for a chessboard-pattern shirt, but his message was the same as earlier: “Our political debates today are corrosive and not reflective of the belief that Abe Lincoln espoused back in his day: that we are a great country because we are a good country.” “I respect the president,” Huntsman repeated in New Hampshire. His supporters applauded. It is an honorable theme. But Huntsman, whether he goes by John or Jon, will almost certainly find that this message spells defeat.
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Previously:
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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