Huckabee a Serious Contender or Just Serious About Croutons?

What better example of a profile primary than Huckabee's recent 11-page spread in The New York Times Magazine? Zev Chafets, the author, does an interesting job defining Huckabee. As a New Yorker, my strongest memory after reading it was the fact that Huckabee chose to eat at Olive Garden when visiting with the writer in Manhattan. Chafets writes, "I had offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed his first choice, T.G.I.Friday's." Huckabee orders soup and a salad and seems to spend a large part of the interview playing with his croutons. I am sure that the Gang of 500 will pick up on this as well. My question is whether America can take a candidate seriously when he visits Manhattan and chooses to eat at a chain. If he wants to appeal to more than the Midwestern voter, why not choose a pizza place or a deli? Is this a case of Huckabee being too humble and "small-town" for his own good?

The rest of the article is also interesting. Chafets's writing shows that he is slightly skeptical of this "dark horse" candidate. At one point, Chafets talks to Huckabee about foreign affairs and gets an interesting response. Chafets writes:

At lunch, when I asked him who influences his thinking on foreign affairs, he mentioned Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, and Frank Gaffney, a neoconservative and the founder of a research group called the Center for Security Policy. This is like taking travel advice from Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, but the governor seemed unaware of the incongruity.

The article is humorous at times, as both quotes illustrate, which allowed me to enjoyably read the entire 11 pages. It is obvious, however, that Huckabee will have to continue to work if he wants to be taken seriously. His rise to the top of the polls is not enough to counter his age and experience.

My Mac won't let me hyperlink but this should work:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/magazine/16huckabee.html?ex=1355461200&en=e8ee2a8545fa9f6f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Clinton Applying Halpern and Harris

In an attempt to reverse Obama's surge in Iowa, Hillary Clinton has lifted a "trade secret" straight from Halpern and Harris: run toward your weakness. Her enemies during the battles of the 1990s portrayed Hillary as a ruthless, ultra-feminist liberal. Obama has not-so-subtly alluded to these memories with his electibility argument: do Democrats really want to nominate someone, he asks, that stirs the passions of every grassroots GOP voter?

To combat this argument, Clinton has begun to highlight her softer side -- she has become more "emotional" at recent speeches in Iowa and is airing ads featuring her mother and daughter gushing about how warm and caring she is. She has also launched a website, CNN reports, showing Hillary as a strong Senator who works hard for everyday people like you and me.

These efforts represent an attempt to drive down her infamous high "unfavorable" ratings the media has worried about and to steal (or at least mitigate) the "nice guy" image that Obama enjoys.