So says A.J. Jacobs, writing a profile of Mike Huckabee in the latest issue of Esquire magazine. Jacobs went backstage at FNC for a "Huckabee" taping, milling around with a motley crue of guests that day, including Dan Rather, Stephen Baldwin, and the remainders of the band Yes.
It's a great profile, even if Joy Behar called Huckabee her "favorite Republican." As Jacobs writes:
In the week before the interview, I'd been told the same thing by a dozen people: He'll charm you. And half an hour in, I've already been sucked in. He's the most likable politician I've ever met. Here he is, one of the most conservative voices in a couple of decades. He's a four-star general in the battle against gay marriage. He's fervently pro-life and is dubious about Darwinism. He disciplined his kids with corporal punishment and he loves his guns. And yet, when you're with him, he's so damn folksy and kind and self-deprecating that the liberal media (i.e., me) just want to hug him.
Although in fairness, I first caught wind of this piece from TV Newser, the indispensable guide to the Cable Game, which highlighted Huckabee's defense of Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson for their interviews with Sarah Palin last fall. I don't agree with Huckabee on Gibson--I thought that Gibson was snooty toward Palin. As The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz observed on September 15, Gibson "seemed like an unsmiling professor peering over his glasses at an earnest graduate student," and Alessandra Stanley, writing in The New York Times, added that Gibson "was at times supercilious."
But I do agree with Huckabee on Couric. Katie asked Palin simple questions, which Palin flubbed. And that's why you hafta watch the news, because you never know what will happen.
