Look back into the history of the past century, and one U.S. political-cultural truth is eminently clear:
Governors win the presidency.
As a rule, a senator or vice president running for the presidency against a state governor is extremely unlikely to win the race. The last senator who was not a sitting president to win the presidency: Kennedy in 1960, and it’s almost a certainty that the close race against Richard Nixon—a former senator and vice president, not a governor—was stolen by pols in Illinois and Texas.
So, when I think about whom any party should nominate for president, I always suggest they go after a governor.
The reason governors beat national politicians, I think, is fairly simple: they have accomplishments they can cite, have served as CEO of a large government organization (as the U.S. presidency is), and, most importantly, don’t have a voting record on important and controversial national issues.
Senators, by contrast, don’t have the individual political-administrative accomplishments to which to point, have records dotted with controversial and polarizing votes, and typically have made a lot of enemies on the national level.
It’s a certainty that the Democrats will reject my advice and run a Senator this time, either Clinton or Obama, most likely, with Sen. Edwards also running fairly strong.
Plus, the Democrats are hopelessly statist, so nobody they nominate is likely to satisfy me or any other reasonably liberal person.
On the Republican side, the top tier candidates are much more varied. Among them are a Senator, McCain (although he’s just barely hanging on at this point, with New Hampshire his only hope for renewal); a former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani; and a governor, Mitt Romney, who would surely be the odds-on favorite if he were not a Mormon but who cannot win the general election because he is highly unlikely to energize the Republicans’ crucial voting bloc, evangelical Christians. Also among the prospective candidates is actor and former Senator Fred Thompson.
So, given that the best choice is a governor and Romney probably isn’t it, whom should the Republicans nominate, from a purely practical perspective?
Before last weekend’s Iowa straw poll I was telling associates that among the current candidates the best choice for the Republicans would be Mike Huckabee. A former Baptist minister who served two terms as governor of Arkansas, a state long controlled by Democrats, where he nonetheless enjoyed high approval ratings, Huckabee is hardly more obscure than Bill Clinton was in 1991 (unless you think Clinton’s tenure as leader of the National Governor’s Association made him world-famous).
Huckabee has been criticized from the right for not being sufficiently anti-tax and not strongly enough opposed to illegal immigration, but those are positions on which he will no doubt continually move to the right, and he did cut a lot of tax rates as governor of Arkansas.
He’s no Ron Paul, to be sure, but from a practical standpoint Huckabee would certainly seem to fit the bill. (Paul should run for governor of Texas before running for president, but he’d be too old by the next go-round for the presidency thereafter. Alas.)
Huckabee has appeal as a candidate, though I’d welcome the entry into the race of some other prominent Republican governor. (Tommy Thompson was hopeless because of his association with the hated Bush administration.) Failing that, I’d reckon they’re best off settling for Huckabee.
After his strong, second-place finish in last week’s Iowa Straw Poll, Republicans should take a good luck at Huckabee. Unless another Christian, low-tax governor (not named Bush) enters the race unexpectedly, Huckabee actually gives them the best chance of winning, if history is any guide.
And you may rest assured, it is.
Good points, Anonymous. Anyone running against Hillary is going to have to be strong and aggressive. Thompson’s candidacy would match a senator against a senator, to be sure, but although he has perhaps the best mix of policy positions of the top three or four prospects for the Republican nomination, I don’t quite see how he can disassociate the Republicans from the big-government conservatism of the 2000s, which is the main thing holding them back at this point.
As a governor who worked with a hostile Democratic legislature, Huckabee, by contrast, could point to economic growth in his state that was spurred by his holding the line on tax rates. That’s the kind of executive-level experience that says a lot to voters.
Remember, although some on the Right complain that Huckabee is not sufficiently tax-averse, that was the complaint among many people on the Right about Ronald Reagan! They argued mightily that Reagan couldn’t be trusted because he signed huge tax increases and expansions of public welfare money during his time as governor of California. Yet he ended up a terrific president who cut federal income tax rates significantly. Certainly Huckabee could end up doing likewise.
Very interesting. We could do worse. This would seem to throw water on the candidacy of Senator Fred Thompson except for the fact that he would be running against another senator. It would seem a natural year for an unusual event (such as a senator winning the White House) since it will also be the first year a female has won the presidential primary of a major party.
Could Huckabee beat Hillary with her Clinton War Machine? She would certainly attempt to destroy him, as the Clintons do to all their enemies. Forget the “new tone” Bush attempted to adopt. Huckabee will have to get off defense and go on the attack immediately. I don’t know if he has it in him to play hardball and get bloodied up. What do you think?
Held against Huckabee by those with enough historical grounding might be his morality-laden populist rhetoric. Woodrow Wilson did tremendous harm to the concept of liberty and limited government because he was convinced of his own moral superiority. He compounded his domestic policy mistakes with foreign policies that combined certitude with ignorance and contributed mightily to the instability of the 20th century. How much of the New Deal would have been possible if not for the work of WW a generation earlier? The fascist impulse is found among leftists as well as conservatives, and we see the intransigience of religion-cum-fascism among the Islamic extremists.
Thanks, Joe. That’s a very good point, and it strengthens the idea that even so humble a prospect as Mike Huckabee has a good chance of winning against eastern or midwest candidates such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards.
I think that your suggestion about instituting a way for readers to get in touch with me is a very good one, so I’ve added a “Contact S. T. Karnick” link on the home page. Thanks for the suggestion.
S.T.: How about the other important factor in being successful in Presidential elections since 1960, which is coming from the South or West? JFK was the last person elected who was from the Northeast. All succeeding presidents have come from either the South or West, which has the fastest growing populations in the U.S.
Also, on an unrelated note (& I do humbly suggest that this site has some way we can contact you to discuss suggested topics or comments other than what you have posted), I have finished acquiring every book of P.G. Wodehouse this week after nearly 30 yrs.