Huckabee Sucks Up to Liberals

They say that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, despite his aw-shucks manner is a true product of Arkansas politics—like Bill Clinton.

So it’s not surprising that in his upcoming article for Foreign Affairs magazine he says just what the liberal Council on Foreign Relations would want to hear.

The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.

You could say that.  Or you could say that the Bush administration’s steadfastness and willingness to adapt when its policy had failed is the reason that we now see light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq.  In the last year the Sunni rejectionists seem to be abandoning revolutionary politics for politics-as-usual.  They have abandoned their alliance with Al Qaeda in Iraq and are working with the US and the Iraqi government.

Frankly, I have no time at all for second-guessers.  Any attempt to do something in this world—as opposed to sitting on the fence—is necessarily a catalog of mistakes.  Every business plan is invalidated the moment it is finished.  Every political campaign is a roller-coaster of “gaffes” and mistakes.  Every war is a parade of folly.

The question for every leader always is: shall we continue on the path we have begun, or is it time to change course?

If you were right to continue on course then the fence-sitters like Mike Huckabee say you are tenacious and courageous.  If you are wrong, then you have an “arrogant bunker mentality.”

But, in fact, the Bush administration has learned from its mistakes, and has changed course when it became clear that its policy wasn’t working.

So what do you call that?