“This race has degenerated into an onslaught of negative and personal attacks not worthy of the American people and not worthy of this critical time in our nation’s history.”
–Jon Huntsman
(pictured with his wife, Mary Kaye)
Jon Huntsman, the lone moderate in the Republican presidential race, is gone, a victim of an increasingly rightward leaning GOP that had no place for a man with credentials but no compunction for flame-thrower rhetoric.
Despite personal qualifications that outshine all the others in the field, Huntsman got off to a late start and never really gained traction.
That’s a shame because I would bet that in Washington, if you talked privately with prominent Republicans and Democrats who could speak freely without upsetting the right-wing or left-wing, respectively, many would tell you that Huntsman would make a better president than anyone in the running – including the incumbent president.
His résumé had suggested he could be a major contender for the GOP nomination: businessman, diplomat, successful governor, veteran of four presidential administrations, an expert on China and foreign trade, with a personal fortune based on his family’s global chemical company.
As AP reported, to distinguish his candidacy in a crowded field, Huntsman positioned himself as a tax-cutting, budget-balancing governor and former business executive who could rise above partisan politics. That would prove to be a hard sell to the conservatives dominating the early voting contests, especially in an election cycle marked by bitter divisions between Republicans and Democrats and a boiling antipathy for Obama.
But Huntsman’s low-key approach and his emphasis on civility should not detract from the quality potential president he was.
Yet, in the age of super PACs and vicious attacks that know no bounds, Huntsman consistently settled to the bottom of the political polls. At the same time, Huntsman, with a bit of deftness, exposed the GOP’s rightward drift.
At one point, the former Utah governor tweeted that he believes in evolution and trusts the scientists’ about climate change. “Call me crazy,” he said, tongue in cheek. At another stage in the campaign he said he was hoping to shape a “sane Republican Party based on real ideas.”
Long before he officially declared his candidacy, he said his vision for a new GOP would be a party comprised of modernizers and reformers, less hostile to the role of government programs, and untethered from the fantasy of a pure Constitutionalist past worshipped by fringe figures like Ron Paul.
In time, it was clear that he was out of step. Out of step in the primary season but certainly the GOP candidate best able to appeal to independents and centrists in the general election.
“Don’t expect him to engage in meaningless hyperbole or apologize for his occasional moderate positions,” said The State editorial. “As he explained recently: ‘We have to draw from ideas that are doable and not so outlandishly stupid that they create a lot of political infighting and finger-pointing and never, ever in a thousand years are going to get done.’
The newspaper concluded: “What makes him attractive are the essential values that drive his candidacy: honor and old-fashioned decency and pragmatism. As he made clear Wednesday to a room packed full of USC (University of South Carolina) students … his goal is to rebuild trust in government, and that means abandoning the invective and re-establishing the political center.”
No wonder that Huntsman was the one candidate that the Obama White House feared.
