Huck's Mistake Involves Integrity

"George W. Bush has resolutely led our nation on a new course, a course not sought by America on September 11, 2001, but a course that rightly affirmed the value of honor and liberty and life. I thank God for his wise leadership and his calming and steadfast policies, policies that in some ways with hindsight could have admittedly been improved, but policies all too quickly attacked, and now being vilified despite the best news from Iraq in over a year." These are the sentences that should headline any foreign policy apologetic by any mainstream conservative seeking the Presidency.

Unfortunately, Governor Huckabee has sunk disappointingly to the level of others who've forgotten the GOPs Eleventh Commandment. Not only has the lightly regarded pseudo-Commandment been breached, far more Huckadamage has been done with his patently fact-challenged attack on the Bush Administration's "arrogant bunker mentality." I say patently false because of those pesky things, facts, that get in the way of a good poll-tested focus group opinion. Never mind the support of England, Poland, Australia, and numerous other countries. Military personnel of these countries are fighting and dying, not because they're stupid, but because their nations' leaders see the same Islamofascist threat that Bush sees.

I don't think a man of integrity ought to be so driven for personal gain that he impugns his own President in time of war and energizes those opponents of our nation's success, both foreign and domestic. I especially believe this when the President has plainly stated his case for his actions, and when after hard times his plans seem to be beginning to work.

Huckabee's poll numbers took a noticeable dip a couple of days ago, a timing coincident with his "arrogant bunker mentality" quote. That Huckabee would write such a screed gives one pause to reconsider other claims of ethical lapse against him. My point is not that the other accusations have merit, nor would they have any traction absent "arrogant bunker mentality," but it is that this whole blunder was completely and totally avoidable, and is even now fixable with a simple apology. I pray that an infection of good sense will gently waft throughout Huckabee headquarters, and that said apology will be forthcoming.