CHAPTER TWELVE
Hope Is More Than Just the Name of My Hometown
We Need to Have Faith in the Future,
No Matter How Big Our Present Problems Are
I was born and raised in Hope, Arkansas, but to me that name means more than just my hometown; it embodies the attitude I have about America today. I’ve spent most of this book discussing a lot of big, important, and urgent issues (which I think is appropriate for a book about government). But in this last chapter I want to share some intensely personal observations and also give you a glimpse of things I’ve been doing since my last book.
Despite the numerous problems and challenges I’ve talked about here, I believe that far too many people are guilty of hand-wringing, worry, and despair over the future of America. That’s not my theme. Some people have seen the rise of the Tea Party movement as an indication that our country is dangerously lost . . . that our time as a strong, unified nation will soon be over.
I think it’s just the opposite: To me, the uprising of ordinary citizens in this movement is in fact an affirmation of everything that is wonderful and positive about America. This country was brilliantly designed by its founders to be a kind of giant self-cleaning oven. When things gunk up the parts and dirty up the works, it’s time to turn on the self-cleaning function. What happens then, as you probably know, is that the heat is raised to a level above any temperature ever used for cooking. All of the dross of leftover food and debris is turned into charred ashes. The oven door is opened; that which remains is easily wiped clean.
In essence, the uprising of the Tea Party movement is America’s affirmation that it is functioning as it was intended to function. The system is creatively at work because it is self-correcting government excesses, loss of control, and isolation from the real needs of the people.
Americans should not fear these movements as indicating the end. Rather, these are indications of a profound and positive rebirth. I have chosen to disable the gloom-and-doom buttons on the dashboard of my life because I believe it is far more important to see where we are going than to remain focused on where we are. As a Christian believer, I have a deep-rooted optimism based on the fact that even if the country should fail, God’s kingdom will not.
Christian believers in this country essentially carry two passports. One is their temporal passport of U.S. citizenship; the other is their eternal passport to eternal life. We are dual citizens of both earth and heaven. While we can hope that both of these kingdoms will survive and sustain, we know for certain that ultimately the kingdom of heaven will survive and sustain.
This confidence is somewhat similar to the experience I’ve had watching basketball games on tape delay. Several years ago, when the Arkansas Razorbacks were at the peak of the NCAA success that culminated in their winning the 1994 national championship, the local ABC affiliate in Little Rock, KATB-TV, was not able to obtain live broadcast rights for every game. They’d have to tape some games live, then play them back in their entirety after the 10:00 P.M. news. In order to give the viewer a sense of live action, the sportscaster would encourage those who planned to watch the game to turn down the volume on their TV sets when he read the final score on the air. That way, even though the game was over and the final score determined, those who wanted to stay up late and watch it would not know the outcome until the end. But I never understood why anyone would stay up until 1:00 A.M. watching a taped game without taking advantage of the obtainable knowledge about the final score. I never considered turning down the volume during the sportscast, because I wanted to know the outcome. If the Razorbacks had won, I’d pop some popcorn, put my feet up, and confidently watch the ballgame. Even in the most intense moments, when the Hogs would fall behind, I was never worried: I knew victory was assured. Even if they were down seven points in the last minute of play, I was confident. If anyone else was up, I could tell them not to worry: “They are going to do fine.” And of course they did.
Christian believers who have read to the end of the Bible have the confidence that, no matter how challenging things can be, the ultimate outcome will be positive and victorious. That’s one reason, among many, that there should be no gloom and doom in the mind, heart, or spirit of a true believer.
Boundary Stones
Even if you are not a believer, here’s some reasoning you might agree with from Proverbs 22:28: “Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set.” The verse refers to ancient boundary stones, which were not to be moved because they served as navigation points—the GPS of biblical times. If they were moved, travelers who depended on them might become hopelessly lost, perhaps in an otherwise featureless desert or dangerous mountainous terrain.
Our culture has inherited invaluable political boundary stones from the Founding Fathers. Any culture in which people move the abiding boundary stones of civilization risks becoming lost, confused, and disoriented. What looks to many of us like a great deal of confusion and darkness in America today is the result of moving cultural boundary stones.
We have moved the boundary stones of freedom and, by trading individual liberty for government dependency, no longer find our pathways to knowledge of the true meaning of liberty.
We have moved the boundary stones of marriage by opening the doors to no-fault divorce, making it easier to get out of a marriage than to get out of a contract for purchase of a used car.
We have moved the boundary stones of family by having some judges and some state legislatures redefine what marriage means, thus abandoning the time-tested definition of one man and one woman in a relationship for life to new definitions, such as legalized relationships between two men, two women, or an individual with two or more partners.
The degree to which we move the boundary stones that form our political legacy, as well as other moral, ethical, and spiritual navigation points, is the degree to which our society, culture, country, and civilization will begin to lose their way and eventually become hopelessly lost.
On the Road Again
But as I’ve said, I’m basically an optimist. Part of the reason is that I’m lucky enough to have contact with so many of you as I travel around the country, sometimes on a book tour, often to make political or inspirational speeches, and, increasingly, wherever I am, remaining in touch with the American reality in my new broadcasting career.
My life has changed dramatically. As governor, on any given day I might experience a tornado that would completely upend my schedule and other priorities. Especially the one on March 1, 1997, which ripped through almost 250 miles from the southwest corner of the state to the northeast corner in what was eventually a series of over twenty tornadoes that killed thirty people and caused millions of dollars in damage. Likewise, a tornado on January 21, 1999, swept through a number of counties, killing twenty-seven people, including one not five hundred yards from the front door of the governor’s mansion, and devastating the neighborhood around us. And on top of all of the natural disasters, our state also had to confront some man-made catastrophes as well, like the 1998 school shooting at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro.
Now the challenges I face in my life are almost completely different, requiring that I balance what for me are several virtually separate universes. My daily radio commentaries, the Huckabee Report, could stand alone as a full-time endeavor. In addition, I’m engaged in the process of putting together my weekly Fox News channel TV show, which is viewed on Saturdays and Sundays by a larger audience than all the other Cablevision news channels combined in that time slot. (In fact, in most cases, it remains the top-rated weekend show in all of cable news.) In addition to those two highly visible media endeavors, I speak as many as fourteen times a month to various corporate groups, trade associations, conventions, and nonprofit organizations. I’m also involved in ongoing writing projects, such as this book, and am directly involved in the operation and management of my political organization, Huck PAC, even though I receive no compensation whatsoever for my involvement w
ith its endeavors to elect conservative candidates to public office.
Some of you may find it ironic that I’m so deeply engaged in media activities, since I have so openly and frankly criticized some aspects of press coverage over the years. I still sometimes fear that our political system is increasingly dominated by the short attention span that is aggravated by the twenty-four-hour cable news channels, bloggers, and Internet news services. Often they are more interested in being first than in being right and more interested in getting ratings or Web site hits than in getting the solid facts. This overwhelming change in the way most people get news has produced unwritten new rules that really should be taught to every student coming into our education system.
A generation ago, a person might have obtained his news from the newspaper on the doorstep or from one of three national TV network evening newscasts. Here’s the critically important thing: Before that news was delivered to the end user, the consumer, it had not only been gathered by a reporter but most likely also fact-checked by an editor and gone over repeatedly by copy editors and others checking not only for grammatical errors but also for factual veracity. Now fast-forward to today, when people get much of their news from their smart phones, the Internet, or some other form of new media. Now each end user, each consumer, must become his or her own editor. There is no longer likely to be a thorough review process between the gatherer/reporter of news and the consumer of news. Anyone who accepts purported fact at face value is likely to be duped by wily, inaccurate, or, at best, misleading declarations. That’s the downside, but the upside of the new media is that more information is available from a much greater variety of sources; one has the opportunity to access vast amounts of data and information. In the best-case scenario, the careful, thoughtful consumer can become better informed and perhaps draw individual conclusions that have not been filtered by a newspaper editor or broadcast news director.
Some of the benefits of the new technology are certainly helpful to me in a personal way. The Huckabee Report—which I record three times a day, five days a week, for broadcast on nearly six hundred radio stations—would not have been possible fifteen or twenty years ago. I would have been required to go to a local radio station or other production facility for each commentary, which would then have been transmitted to the network for national distribution. This would have been impossible given the intensity of my travel schedule. Today’s Huckabee Report is made possible almost entirely because of the capacity of the Internet. I carry with me wherever I travel the compact equipment that allows me to broadcast instantly.
Here’s how it works. Each day I consult with writers, based in Dallas, who prepare a compilation of news reports and features gathered, literally, from news sources around the world. Once I receive the material over the Net, I edit it, add some personal touches and commentary and perspective, assemble the stories in order to time them, sort them, and piece them together to create the exact to-the-second program that will become that day’s Huckabee Report. My portable equipment allows me to record the program into my MacBook, convert the audio into an MP3 file, then upload it to an engineer at Citadel Broadcasting by way of the Internet. He packages the program for broadcast before uploading it—also on the Internet—to the network headquarters in New York for distribution to the nearly six hundred stations. In other words, every hotel room I stay in becomes my studio, as does my home office or wherever I happen to be. I am literally able to do the Huckabee Report from anywhere in the world where there is an Internet connection available. I’ve done reports from Japan, Korea, Israel, Ireland, France, Italy, and the Virgin Islands, as well as most of the fifty states. The technology is not only convenient; it also allows me to travel continually, getting the perspectives of locales and individuals across the spectrum of American and international life. It’s far better to offer a perspective that is informed by actually touching and talking to people every day than to pontificate from a sterile studio environment, where my perspective might be filtered from traditional news sources.
What’s It Really Like There?
I’m often asked—in fact, on a daily basis—about the working atmosphere at Fox News channel. Thankfully, I can truthfully answer that the atmosphere there is extraordinarily collegial. In fact, it is a unique environment for a media company, given the typical backbiting, dogeat-dog behaviors at many ego-driven broadcasting centers. While there is a strong ambition within the Fox News channel family to excel and achieve high ratings and success, there is a surprisingly positive working relationship among the team. I attribute much of this to Roger Ailes, who is not only a media visionary but also a person who goes out of his way to encourage all of us to bring our best game to the field. He keeps us all mindful that the competition is fierce but not internal. His penchant for spotting and developing exceptional talent is obvious from the stunning and continually soaring success of Fox News.
One thing that I find surprises many people about Fox is the wall of separation between the news division and the program division. Critics of the company point to program hosts/commentators like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, or me as being partisan or at least decidedly philosophical and ideological. What such critics miss is that the programs that are clearly labeled and carried out as commentary make no apology or pretense about having a strongly stated point of view. On the other hand, I would put the Fox’s news division operation against anybody’s in terms of its overall genuine balance and fairness. When a viewer watches Shepard Smith, Bret Baier, or any of the correspondents on the channel’s straight newscasts, the information might be presented in an edgy way, but not with an ideological bias. There is an extraordinary camaraderie, not only among the on-air personalities but also among the crews and staffs of the various shows. This is the result of an esprit de corps that would be unusual in any corporate environment but is especially noteworthy in the media world. I consider myself very fortunate to work among very talented, hardworking, and dedicated professionals who never resent a colleague’s success but understand that the more successful any Fox show is, the better for all of us.
Of course, working on my own show has afforded me two unique opportunities: First, it has allowed me to continue to engage in discussion of policy issues that are very important to me and has given me a platform for sharing opinions and ideas. Second, I’ve been given the rewarding opportunity to meet some influential newsmakers as well as the biggest names in entertainment and music.
By the way, Fox executives were not sure, in the beginning, that the music feature of my show would be well received or work in that context. I held my ground, pushing hard to include music; today it is one of the most popular features, whether it’s the music of our house band, “the little rockers”—made up of full-time Fox employees who range from cameramen to lighting technicians—or guest appearances by celebrity entertainers ranging from Willie Nelson to Neil Sedaka to George Jones, from Andy Williams to Lynyrd Skynyrd. People often come up to me in airports, in hotels, or on the street to tell me that it looks like I’m having a lot of fun playing my bass guitar with Meat Loaf, Toby Keith, or Tanya Tucker. I’m quick to tell them I’m having far more fun than I deserve. (I’m not sure I want Roger Ailes to know this, but there are days when I’d probably pay him for the opportunity to make music with some of the artists whom I grew up idolizing and seeking to emulate.)
One major part of my life for the past few years has been the pleasure of writing—a task I enjoy greatly, especially when I have time for it! Once a person writes a book, the other side of the process is marketing it through extensive book tours. For example, the December 2009 tour for my Christmas book, A Simple Christmas, had me on a bus for twenty-one consecutive days visiting sixty-four cities and signing well over fifty thousand copies. The hours are long and the schedule beyond grueling. To keep some level of sanity on the tour, my road crew and I started making notes of some of the wonderfully funny things people would say after standing in line (sometimes for up to fou
r hours) in order to walk quickly up to the signing table, where I would extend a handshake and sign an autograph before having to turn to the next person. I was always amazed when as many as 1,400 people lined up for a signing, even though they knew that the total time they’d have to visit with me would be measured in seconds.
But some of them certainly took the opportunity to make an impression. A lady in Oklahoma leaned over the table and said, “Honey, I want you to know I’ve never waited this long on a man.” In Kentucky, another lady said, “This is the most excited I’ve been since my wedding day.” Then there was the Tennessee lady who announced, with a great deal of pride, “I want you to know that I shaved my legs for you today.” (No, I had no intention of looking or feeling to see if she was telling the truth.) My crew helped put together a “quote of the day”—yes, these all made the cut—which we would discuss as we boarded the bus for the next stop, eating yet another meal on the road.
So this is my life today: busy, challenging, fascinating. As a reader, listener, or viewer, you and millions like you certainly play an important part in all of it. I try every day to keep in touch with the concerns of the American people. If you ever decide to help me in that goal by writing a letter or e-mailing me, pro or con, I can promise you will certainly be heard. Meanwhile, we all have a lot of work to do on maintaining those boundary stones. I hope some of the ideas I’ve discussed here will be helpful to that effort.
A Simple Government Page 19