Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate at his Iowa Campaign Headquarters on December 4, 2007, in Des Moines. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)
by Frank James
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The latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows that Mike Huckabee has risen into second place among Republican voters, a truly remarkable move that also shows just how unstable is the race for the GOP presidential nomination. (Not that the Democrats are much more stable.)
Huckabee’s ascent probably has a lot to do with his debate performances, especially the most recent one, the CNN/You Tube debate.
Huckabee came across then as he often has as a gifted communicator. He’s got the dynamic duo of public speaking going for him, a seductive delivery and apparent sincerity, just like that other former governor from Hope, Ark, Bill Clinton. (What do they have in the water down there?)
What George Burns said about acting holds for politics: “The secret of acting is sinceroty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Not that Huckabee’s faking.
But it may also have something to do with his face. I was chatting with a senior Republican official recently and he said that there was actually some testing done of candidates’ visages that showed voters like Huckabee’s face more than the other candidates. It’s apparently appealing to a lot of voters because it’s not handsome like Mitt Romney’s. Huckabee has an imperfect face with imperfect teeth, according to this official, and that makes him come off as an everyman, a real person, someone eminently likable.
It’s kind of reminiscent of what the writer Nelson Algren said of Chicago. There are lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.
One of our Swamp commenters, GW, hit on the Huckabee face theory in an earlier posting.
BY JOVE! It has finally hit me why people like Huck a Buck. Just think for a minute. Who is/was everybody’s favorite cartoon character? Why, Dagwood Bumstead, of course! Look at Huck closely and you’ll see the strong facial resemblance. And the behavior. Who cannot see how that blissful, blundering, awkwardness of Huck is very Dagwood? Could this be the very person America is looking for as comic relief from the heavy drama of the Bush years? I don’t think so.
Posted by: GW | December 5, 2007 7:59 AM
Maybe there’s something to the whole face thing. But even though his face may take Iowa, whether it can take New Hampshire, South Carolina and the “Tsunami Tuesday” states is another question entirely.