Personal Asides: Some Republicans Would Rather Harpoon Huckabee than Win….Well What is it—Resume or Non-Resume Running for President?...”Max” Wants to Know: Where Do the Numbers Come From…Correction: The “Des Moines” Editor is Reminiscent of—Not Nurse...

Huckabee.

“We don’t smoke/ And we don’t chew/ And we don’t go/With girls who do!”

That seems to be the attitude of the white shoe Republicans who want a vice presidential candidate to run with Romney or Giuliani (though Romney is more likely to get the nomination for president) than a blue-colored, witty, phrase-making former 2-term governor who was listed as one of the best governors in the United States. I’m talking about Mike Huckabee who would bring great strength to the ticket and should be cast in the role of vice president if they could work things out—so that he would drop the Fair Tax and be a loyal campaigner-partner.

Tsk-tsk. Country club Republicans are spreading this stuff right now about Huckabee. Do you know that as governor he objected to a 15-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather having a court-ordered abortion? Of course—abortion is the taking of a human life which is what country clubbers can’t bring themselves to recognize or admit. Do you really want to be governed by somebody who suggested quarantining all people with AIDS? In the early days of this infection no one knew how contagious it was for sure and AIDS is still a sacred cow because of its closeness to homosexuality. (Digression item: Did you see that article in the “Catholic New World” where Catholic Charities is going to “honor” AIDS victims? Honor them? Do they honor cancer victims? Stroke victims? AIDS patients ought to be given solace, full medical treatment, compassion, understanding, the full extent of counseling--but “honor”? Do you “honor” cigarette smokers who come down with lung cancer? Or an obese guy who continued eating until he had a heart attack? “Honoring” AIDS victims is endemic of the abject lavender political correctness that’s hit the church. End of digression).

Back to Huckabee. Do you know that although it’s ethically okay in Arkansas—gifts being exempt from ethics laws as it was under Bill Clinton as governor--Huckabee got $112,000 in freebies in a single year as governor

…including, get this, a wedding registry at Target, a $39 asparagus pot, a $100 Jack LaLanne power juicer and a $259 cookware set. How awful.

Also that he said he has a theology degree when he has not? In the last debate he said, “I’m the only guy on the stage with a theology degree. I think I understand [terrorism] well.. Republican white-shoe purists swarmed all over that one. He has a bachelor of arts in religion in his undergraduate studies so his theology degree is at the college level. Since then he put in 46 hours toward a masters—three years of study in New Testament Greek. Anybody else have that?

The point I’m making is not that he should be the presidential candidate but to get white-shoe Republicans to understand that this next year may well equal 1974, the Watergate year, for Republicans. What you do is get a full-fledged expert on the economy, law and governance to run for president and build toward broadening the ticket for vice president. For some reason or other neither Romney, Giuliani or Thompson have the pull with evangelicals that Huckabee has. Get him to ditch the Fair Tax and give him two terms to be vice president and you have another candidate with proven communications skills and experience to be president. Why is that so hard for white-shoe people to understand?

Resume vs. Non-Resume.

One of my close friends asked me: which is it? At one time you said resumes don’t mean much in the arsenal of a presidential candidate and the next time you cited the power resumes of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Which is it?

The answer is political candidates are not governed by absolutes. Obviously when you’re running a five-star general who led the greatest invasion in world history and conquered the Axis…and who had never run for office…you cite the resume as indispensable. But resumes don’t necessarily mean much. Take for instance the holder of this resume who ran for president:

This man was the youngest student ever admitted to this particular university and hadn’t even received a high school diploma but who was picked for this major university as a freshman because of his high achievement…who matched superb grades with terrific extracurricular participation—elected junior class treasurer, treasurer of the student body, outstanding shortstop on the university baseball team, working his way up as newsboy and clerk in the registration office and starting up the student laundry service…during the summer between freshman and sophomore years working as a geologist mapping the north side of the Ozarks…who also managed the university’s baseball team and who, when a former president of the United States came on campus and ducked into the stadium to catch the baseball game without paying the ticket, approached him and dinged him for the ticket eliciting this from the former president: “You will go far, young man!”

After graduating with high honors pushed ore carts 70 hours a week at a gold mine near Nevada City, California…landed a modest office job and hired by a mining company as an engineer at Coolgardie, Australia where he wsa responsible for inspecting and evaluating mines before purchase…transferred to China serving as an enginer in Chihli and Johol provinces…finding huge coal deposits there…helped defend his company’s interests during the Boxer Rebellion....going to Australia to develop highly lucrative zinc mines…then developing the Bawdwin silver mine in Burma where he became a multi-millionaire at age 28…forming his own company in development of world resources becoming a two-digit multi-millionaire so that he need never work again at 32…

In his mid-30s he is tapped by the president of the United States as U.S. food administrator for which he declines pay…become a symbol of U.S. humanitarianism in World War I and top economic adviser to President Wilson at the Versailles conference, causing FDR to volunteer to campaign for him if he were to seek the presidency as a Democrat…named secretary of commerce, he impels the department to engage in a wide range of testing services unique to government, the Census bureau to expand its questioning to add invaluable economic and social data previously unknown…sets up the first regulation for commercial aviation…instrumental in convincing the U.S. steel industry to abandon the 12-hour workday, pressed for construction of Boulder Dam. All before he received the Republican nomination for president at the age of 54.

Now compare this resume to that of his opponent. The New York-born son of a teamster, with such little formal education that well into his adult years could hardly spell correctly or write a sentence that didn’t need editorial revising, worked from childhood on at the Fulton Fish Market, joining Tammany Hall the Democratic party’s machine base, running for the legislature, then sheriff of New York county, then president of the New York city board of aldermen and finally governor of New York. All his jobs from adolescent years onward were political patronage jobs. Laughed and said he was a graduate of “the University of Hard Knocks.” Spoke with a lowbrow New York accent, laughed at because he couldn’t even pronounce the name “radio” correctly, calling it “ra-a-a-d-io” becoming the Democratic nominee for president at age 55. Almost no contest, right?

The one with the infinitely better resume won—Herbert Hoover. By all odds one of the best-meaning but ineffective presidents ever, who raised taxes during the Depression, utterly the worst thing to do, signed the Smoot Hawley tariff that he thought would protect U.S. farmers from foreign competition; instead it launched a world-wide tariff war, telling Americans “prosperity is just around the corner.” Could his opponent Al Smith whom he defeated 58% to 41% have done better. He could hardly have done worse. As governor he bought about the 8-hour workday, minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, a state labor arbitration commission, promoted the rights of women and immigrants, cleared slums, extended medical services to rural areas, built schools, hospitals, prisons and parks and established a state budget system. Given Hoover’s egregious mistakes the ill-educated, so-called political hack Smith could well have been superior in the White House.

I guess the point is this: Apart from someone who has a 5-star resume and is hailed as the savior of the West, one shouldn’t concentrate unduly on a resume. That’s all I was saying. Maybe I should have made it clearer.

Max Wants to Know.

A correspondent to this website named Max wants to know where I got the statistics I used last seek in demolishing Democratic assertions on the economy. They are published in “The American,” the magazine of the AEI Public Policy Institute. November-December 2007 issue in an article by Stephen Moore, senior economics writer for the “Wall Street Journal,” a member of its editorial board and contributor to CNBC-TV.

Correction: Not Nurse Ratched but--.

The other day I wrote that the severely feminist Des Moines “Register” editor who was the Dominitrix with a whip and spurs reminded one of Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Not as much as she did Nurse Diesel in Mel Brooks’ film “High Anxiety.” Sorry.