Mike Huckabee and 2012 (Jourbalists and Schmidt fawning over him, for now)

MSNBC ^ | June 21, 2010 | Mark Murray

[2ndDivisionVet]

Like it or not, the 2012 presidential campaign season is already underway. Right now, we're in the nascent stage of the cycle where folks are asking: Will he/she run?

A new 8,300-word New Yorker profile asks that question of Mike Huckabee. Among the nuggets in the piece (some of which we had already heard):

-- Huckabee is now registered to vote in Florida, not his native Arkansas

-- He has gained weight since his '08 campaign days, though he doesn't weigh the 300-odd pounds he once weighed

-- Former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt says some VERY nice things about Huckabee.

In some ways, Huckabee seems like a promising candidate for 2012: a squeaky-clean family man and bona-fide Christian who loves to talk. His communication is folksy but fluid; he never seems flummoxed, like George W. Bush, or befuddled, like John McCain, or unprepared, like Sarah Palin. “If we’re running a race against their most articulate guy,” Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s former campaign manager, told me, referring to President Obama, “we should put our most articulate guy. Huckabee’s that guy.” Schmidt, who has traded barbs with Palin since the election, said, “There’s no one who really provides a better contrast to Sarah Palin, showing her as an entertainer instead of a serious thinker—and there’s not enough oxygen for both of them.”(continued)

[2ndDivisionVet]

I was born in February of that year so I have no recollection of the “Lucky Dutchman” or his ads. Southern California was so different then it’s like we lived in another age.

[SoCalPol]

I heard of Hobo but didn’t watch.
I watched a few times here and there John but even as a kid I watched the adult programs wasn’t too much into kid stuff,
A few of the kid programs out of New York were worth watching.

[GSWarrior]

I minored in jourbalism in college. ; )

[Fiji Hill]

Southern California was so different then it’s like we lived in another age.

Another galaxy might be a more apt analogy. In 1960, at the age of nine, I knew every alley in West Whittier and regularly rode my bicycle--alone--to supermarkets, drugstores, parks, the library, etc. Most of these places were located more than a mile from my home. Today, in that same neighborhood, one wouldn't dare allow a nine-year-old to play unsupervised in his front yard.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I could still do the exact same thing in 1968 at age eight in Chino. Today, an Army veteran, bodyguard and bouncer, 6 feet tall and weighing 340lbs I wouldn’t walk down a street there without at least a sidearm.