by Scott Lamb
In 2005, Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, addressed the nation’s governors at the National Education Summit on High Schools. Gates warned them of the need to improve the quality of U.S. high schools because, at the current levels of academic preparation, U.S. students would not be able to compete with international students. The National Governors Association cosponsored the summit, and Huckabee served as the vice chairman of the NGA that year. He cited a study showing the importance of a challenging curriculum in high school as the key predictor for whether the student would finish college—trumping socioeconomic or racial factors. “This is about the starting line, not the finish line,” Huckabee said.6
The point here isn’t to analyze the complex question of whether these federal or Arkansas programs succeeded or failed. Rather, it is simply to place Huckabee’s attempts within the historical context of the national conversation conservatives were having at the time. The current debate over Common Core is both heated and important, but it is not identical to the conversations about education that took place from 1996 to 2006.
A third area of concern for Huckabee centered on the educational opportunities afforded to the children of illegal immigrants. In 2005, he advocated on behalf of legislation that would ensure illegal immigrants could be awarded college scholarships or receive in-state tuition, no matter their citizenship status. This was not a popular position within his own political party. When Jim Holt, a Baptist minister and Arkansas state senator, sponsored legislation to deny benefits to immigrants, Huckabee called the bill “un-Christian,” “race-baiting,” and “demagoguery.” In case he had not been clear enough, Huckabee said, “I drink a different kind of Jesus juice.”7 Holt responded by saying that state benefits and Christian charity could not “turn a blind eye to lawbreaking.”8
Chad Gallagher, an aide to Huckabee at the time, remembers the immigration debates of 2005, describing them as “the moment I was proudest of the governor’s leadership. He acted politically courageous by taking an unpopular stand—in a battle that he ultimately didn’t win.”9
Gallagher continued, “He reminded us that immigration is a federal problem and must be fixed on the federal level with a securing of the borders. But he said that as the governor of the state, he couldn’t educate a child K–12, tell them about the American dream, and then not give them in-state tuition or a scholarship—even when they were the valedictorian of their class.”
Despite Huckabee’s hard work in favor of the bill, it was defeated. “He never blinked,” Gallagher recalled. “We sat in strategy meetings where the governor heard reports from his best supporters, telling him to stay away from the bill. It may have been the right thing to do, but it was political suicide. The governor said, ‘I understand your concerns and agree with you that immigration has to be overhauled, but that’s not what this is about. This is about justice and injustice for those children. And I won’t budge.’ ”
Gallagher said the way Huckabee stood on principle, forgoing the political calculations, was a defining moment. “I went home and told my wife, ‘I already knew that I love and respect and support Mike Huckabee, but today I was most proud to work for him.’ He didn’t pander. He wasn’t a politician. He took a lot of criticism, even from friends, but he was unwavering because he was doing it from a place of deep care and compassion and conviction. He didn’t mind the heat because he believed he was doing the right thing.”
During this final term of office, national praise began to be heard for the job Huckabee had done during his governorship. Time magazine put Huckabee on their list of the “Top 5 Governors” of 2005. They wrote that because of the financial turmoil and budget shortfalls plaguing states at the midpoint of the decade, “Today what makes Governors great is not the loft of their dreams but the depths of their pragmatism. . . . When it comes to raw political talent, there’s not a Bill Clinton in this group. But these are the rainy days. And charisma doesn’t keep you dry. A roof does. Meet the hardest-working carpenters of 2005.”10
With those introductory caveats, the magazine said Huckabee “has approached his state’s troubles with energy and innovation, and he has enjoyed some successes.” They also noted how he had mellowed into a leader who knew how to unite people across traditional lines of division. “Huckabee is now a mature, consensus-building conservative who earns praise from fellow Evangelicals and, occasionally, liberal Democrats.”11
Then, AARP followed suit and awarded Huckabee its “Impact Award,” given to those who have done something extraordinary “to make the world a better place.”12
Also in 2005, Governing magazine honored Huckabee by naming him its “Public Official of the Year,” calling him “a true exemplar of the concept of compassionate conservatism.” They wrote, “He has overseen breakthroughs in health coverage for children, education management, and school finances. He also sponsored the largest tax cuts Arkansas has ever seen, as well as the state’s biggest road construction package. And the state this year racked up the largest budget surplus in its history.”13
But even as Huckabee began to attract national attention and accolades, he also began to come under increasing attack by conservative groups. The Club for Growth expressed concern about the increases in state spending under Huckabee, calling him a liberal in disguise. In 2006, the libertarian Cato Institute graded him an F for his fiscal policies in Arkansas and an overall grade of D for his entire time as governor.14
To this day, Huckabee has continued to wage war back and forth with these groups, and they have responded by pouring millions of dollars into campaigns against him. Some of the leaders come from Arkansas, giving them what they feel was a front-row seat to Huckabee’s economic prodigality. Huckabee notes that many of these people come from incredible wealth, and he argues that they do not understand the way most Americans operate or what their needs are. They counter by stating that Huckabee’s fiscal policies were of little difference from Clinton’s (or Democrats’ in general) and that his social conservatism in no way overrides his heterodoxy on economic and tax issues.
Huckabee responded by calling them the “Club for Greed” and challenged the idea that any tax increase is a bad thing. On one hand, he believed that his record had been distorted by these groups. But on the other hand, he believed that even when the honest facts proved he had raised taxes or increased spending, his responsibility as governor called for him to provide safe roads and efficient schools—and that these responsibilities demanded someone pay for them. Indeed, the Arkansas Constitution required the state to operate under a balanced budget. Further, with the court mandating the educational reforms, the governor said he was obligated to take action—even when that expanded the size of the government.
Huckabee also explained his fiscal governance in terms of compassion trumping conservative ideology. Countering the claim that it’s not the government’s job to make sure lower-income kids go to school and have health care, he told the New Yorker’s Ariel Levy, “If the kid’s sitting outside the door of the hospital choking with asthma, do I sit there and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think, philosophically, government should get involved’? I’d much rather the kid gets help than I sit around and say I’m so pure in my ideology.”15 Huckabee preferred practical problem solving to worrying about political ramifications or philosophical conundrums.
Only time will tell whether the now-decades-old coalition between social and economic conservatives will hold together. The cracks in the wall of that relationship have already begun to form as each side explains exactly which values they consider essential for the Republican party and which ones can be jettisoned.
Behind the scenes, what kind of boss was Huckabee? What was it like to work for him? He claims to be a “very driven person” and that he expected “other people would really work hard” in their service to the citizens. But he denies being unfair or volatile. “No one will ever t
ell you that I yelled at them or screamed at them or berated them in front of others,” he said. “You’ll never hear that. I think quite the opposite. I always told my people that if they mess up, just make sure I heard it from them first—not the next morning in the newspaper.”16
Huckabee said he expected his staff to make some mistakes, but to learn from them and move on. You don’t simply move good people out the door after they have one bad week. True leadership, according to Huckabee, sometimes meant taking the fall for your staff when they made an honest error. He recalled a time when a member of his administration made a multimillion-dollar mistake. “It wasn’t stolen money, just money that went into the wrong account. It made the state budget look bad—a very embarrassing event. The man was in my office in tears, knowing he was about to get fired. But I said, ‘I’m not going to fire you. You were straightforward, and you told me what happened. We’ll live with it. Let’s just accept that I’m going to get blamed for it, but I’ll live to fight another day.’ ”17
On the other hand, Huckabee said his staff knew that if they had finished ninety-nine out of one hundred assignments the governor had given them, then he would invariably ask them about the one yet uncompleted task. “They’d ask, ‘How did you know?’ and ‘Why didn’t you ask me about the others?’ ” Huckabee said. “I don’t know how all that worked out, except that it’s the mark of a good executive to have a feel for what’s going on around you. You can’t micromanage, like Jimmy Carter, but you do have to ask questions and do spot surveys to get a sense of how things are going—like the rock band who specified in their contract that no brown M&Ms were to be in their dressing room. They needed to see in an instant if the local crew had read the contract or not.”18
In 2005, Huckabee gained national attention for three very different things. First, he led in a public ceremony of “covenant marriage,” putting a spotlight on Arkansas’s high divorce rate and offering an avenue for strengthening marriages.19 Second, he ran a marathon and published a weight loss book as the capstone of a two-year turnaround in his health and obesity. As the New York Times wrote, “it was as if he simply unzipped a fat suit and stepped out.”20 Third, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation wreaked upon Arkansas’s neighbors to the south, Huckabee earned high applause for the efficient compassion shown to the seventy-five thousand hurricane refugees who flooded into Arkansas in a matter of days.
On Valentine’s Day, 2005, three to four thousand couples gathered with the governor at Alltel Arena in Little Rock, to celebrate their marriage vows and to consider the idea of Arkansas’s “covenant marriage.” Back in 2001, Huckabee signed legislation giving couples the ability to get married under a modified marriage license, the “covenant marriage” approach. This voluntary act signified that the couple had committed to each other and to the state of Arkansas that, if their marriage seemed headed for divorce, they would first receive counseling and that they would have to wait longer than a normal divorce settlement. Also, entering into a covenant marriage meant divorce would only be granted for abuse, abandonment, or adultery.
Critics said covenant marriage might keep people in abusive situations longer. Also, same-sex marriage activists picketed outside (and heckled inside) the arena, proclaiming the injustice of their not having the right to marry at all. Supporters of covenant marriage, however, agreed with the governor as he said, “There is a crisis of divorce here in Arkansas. . . . When it is easier to get out of a marriage than get out of a contract to buy a used car, clearly something is wrong.”21 Huckabee told the crowd that his marriage, though then over thirty years in duration, was not invulnerable to trouble. He said that covenant marriage simply offered a “speed bump” for couples who were rushing into divorce during times of marital stress and crisis.
Couples who were already married had the opportunity to convert their regular license into a covenant marriage license. The Huckabees, along with hundreds of the couples present that night, converted theirs, then renewed their vows and exchanged kisses.
Though many Arkansans thought the entire ceremony was corny, nobody could deny that Huckabee’s moral leadership set a much higher bar for what to expect out of future governors. As Lester Sitzes told a reporter, “He’s been true to his wife and never had any kind of—there will be no Monica Lewinsky or Gennifer Flowers—because Mike and Janet are what they are.”22
Second, Huckabee lost an incredible amount of weight, ran a marathon, and wrote a book to tell the world about it—and to encourage everyone to do the same. The impetus for Huckabee’s weight loss and health crusade began in 2003 when his doctor warned him that he probably had only ten more years to live due to obesity and a lack of exercise. Huckabee and his sister, Pat Harris, remember the final ten to fifteen years of their own parents’ lives, years Dorsey and Mae spent in sickness and poor health. Huckabee also reflected on the sudden heart attack and death of friend and former Arkansas governor Frank White—invariably brought on by his lack of a healthy lifestyle. Huckabee wondered if a similar fate awaited him.
Huckabee rejected the idea that he could not change a lifetime of bad habits, but he knew it would first take a change in his mind-set. He had to turn away from thinking obesity was acceptable. Indeed, in the religiously charged atmosphere of the South, gluttony has traditionally been an “acceptable sin” within the culture. After good Protestants let “wine and women” pass them by, they are less reluctant to forgo chicken fried steak smothered in gravy. Rex Nelson remarked that Huckabee would never be caught “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” alluding to the 2009 sexual scandal of Huckabee’s fellow Republican governor, Mark Sanford of South Carolina. “Should he fall off the wagon, it’d be the buffet trail.”23
Huckabee also explained the link between the South’s lower income levels and their higher rates of obesity, noting that techniques like breading, frying, and drenching meat in gravy stretch the food further.24
Before he began waging war on his waistline, Huckabee’s weight would peak at close to three hundred pounds in 2003. Things got so bad that Huckabee crushed an antique chair when he sat down at the table for a Cabinet meeting.25 Something had to be done.
Huckabee cut out fried foods and sugar. He began taking short walks, only to find himself doubled over with heavy breathing. But then, the short walks became long ones, and colleagues began to notice. He declared his goal to be health and fitness, rather than weight loss.26
As he began to turn his own health around, Huckabee led Arkansas to pass legislation requiring all public school children to receive annual body mass index (BMI) checkups. The reports were sent home with advice to parents for combating obesity and a lack of exercise. Some conservatives chided him for creating a “nanny state” mind-set, noting that small government principles should just let people live with the consequences of their poor decisions. But Huckabee felt that when a child was clinically obese by the age of ten, it was the child’s parents and the prevailing culture that were mostly to blame. Besides, he argued, the state budget had a vested interest in its citizens being healthy, given the large payments made for health care. The proverbial “ounce of prevention” among children would cost less than fixing the major medical problems of grown adults.
He continued the emphasis in 2004, with the launch of “Healthy Arkansas,” a program for promoting changes in the culture and mind-set of his fellow citizens. And as he did so, Huckabee became the poster boy for the changes he was advocating. Pictures of the slimmed-down governor splashed across the newspapers, and people were shocked. When people saw him in person for the first time since losing the weight, they hardly even recognized him. Then, to add to the amazement, he ran a marathon in 2005—a great feat of physical accomplishment that took a team of new friends to give him the skills and encouragement he needed.
Alice Stewart, now Huckabee’s director of communications, was a news anchor in Little Rock at
the time, and an avid runner who trained people for marathons. Stewart approached Huckabee after the Little Rock “Firecracker 5K” event in July 2005, Huckabee’s first 5K. “I was just real excited for him,” Stewart recalled. “I had gotten a trophy and I gave mine to him because I was so proud of him for losing weight. I had struggled with weight myself, so he was being a great role model for people that struggle with diabetes and weight issues. I mentioned that he should run a marathon, and he looked at me like I was crazy.”27
Huckabee came back to Stewart a few weeks later and asked for more information. “Look, if you want to commit to doing it, I will personally train you for it,” Stewart told Huckabee. The governor signed on and went onto Stewart’s disciplined schedule of running, pushing Huckabee into longer lengths with each passing week. Stewart recalled Huckabee’s solid commitment: Once, the rain forced them to train indoors, but when they arrived at the governor’s mansion to use the treadmill, they discovered it was broken. Stewart suggested putting off the training. “But he wouldn’t hear of that. He sat down and fixed the treadmill, then got up and did his running. He didn’t let anything get in the way. Honestly, if he hadn’t been able to fix the treadmill, he probably would have jogged in place for twenty miles. That’s how committed he was to turning his life around and being a better role model for Arkansas citizens, especially the kids.”28