I do not heart Huckabee
Folks it looks increasingly like this is the guy we'll be going up against in the general election in November, whether it's Hillary, Obama, Edwards, or a dark horse like Biden. With all due respect to my Christian friends and those with ordained ministers as parents (cough cough) the thought of a Southern Baptist minister being the president of
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Huckabee has the Golden Pass of the press behind him right now. He's the hot new thing and he's peaking at the right time. He is also benefiting from the discomfort of evangelicals with the current slate of candidates, since both Guliani and Romney have, shall we say, problems with the more far-right base of the Republican Party. Huckabee has a major parole horror story -- like Willie Horton bad -- in his past that should bring down his numbers at some point, but right now he has the Big Mo' and the primaries are creeping up on us.
I agree with you that it would be nice to vote -for- someone rather than just -against- the Republicans. That said I did eventually come to believe in a John Kerry presidency and took it very very hard when he lost. Obama is someone that I could get behind, though I am not 100% sold on voting for him yet. He so far has lacked the rhetorical vision that makes for a historic campaign, but I'm open to being persuaded.
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I know what you mean about the media endorsement, but remember what happened to Howard Dean? He seemed to be the media darling, but lost in Iowa, then did the "yeeee-aaaarrrggghhh" thing that made such a great sound clip and, essentially, ended his campaign. I bring this up, not because of the sound clip, but because he somehow lost in Iowa. I never figured out why. You may have explained it to me, but it was likely at the DHB and therefore, the brain cells with that info were shortly destroyed by that Evan Williams guy.
I had the opposite tale with the Kerry campaign: I started as a Kerry believer, but came to realize that I was really just voting against Bush. As for Obama, I agree that his campaign has lacked something special. And I think his problem is the same problem that Gore had in 2000: he's trying to avoid the pitfalls. Think about how much cooler Gore seemed after he emerged from his loss in 2000. It's because he was finally talking about what he believed in, not just keeping to the safe road. And that, in turn, made him a lot more dynamic (and less wooden).
The campaign trail that dares to speak up for what the candidate believes runs into a lot of risks. But none of those risks are individually as big as the risk of the safe road. The safe road leaves a candidate without a distinct identity. The safe road leaves the candidate looking like every other politician running for office (at least from his/her party). What I think Obama needs to do is be more himself than the guy trailing Hillary (who I don't really think would be the leading candidate for the Dems if it weren't for Fox News early annointment somewhere around 2003. Ironic, no?).
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