I’m surprised I haven’t seen anything on the Thinklings yet about this—I really expected Quaid to be all over it—but Mike Huckabee rocked Leno last night. Literally.
I should note, I only tripped across his appearance, since I’ve been pretty sick and haven’t been following much of anything the last week or two; I knew Law & Order‘s season premiere (which also rocked, btw) was last night, though, so I watched that, and thus saw the ads for Leno’s return, and Huckabee’s appearance. I was interested to see what Leno would have to say about the writers’ strike, and just as interested to see Huckabee, so I stayed up to watch.
I was quite impressed. Of course, as I’ve noted here earlier, I’d already been worked around to supporting Huckabee, so it’s not like I was predisposed against him; but still, as compared to a guy like Fred Dalton Thompson, or other pols I’ve seen on Leno, Huckabee seemed very natural and relaxed, poised but at his ease. He talked very freely and naturally about his faith and some of his policy positions—among other things, he made hands-down the best case I’ve ever heard for replacing the national income tax with a national sales tax, an idea about which I’m now actually somewhat less dubious than I was; he also talked about his decision not to go negative on Romney in Iowa and told some of his own story, including his early rock-and-roll ambitions. At that point, Leno asked him, “Are you good enough to play with the band?” and he answered, “No, but I’d like to anyway”—and when they came back from the commercial break, there he was on bass guitar, next to Kevin Eubanks. Granted, it was a pretty standard walk-it-up bass riff, nothing real challenging, but still, it was obvious that he and everyone else was having a grand old time; he got a high-five from Eubanks as he headed back to the couch.
All in all, I have to think Mike Huckabee won himself some votes last night; I suspect there are also a number of us out there who are rather more firmly in his camp now than we were. Not a bad night’s work, Governor; not a bad night’s work at all.
This might sound dumb, but his appearance on Leno is what makes me believe that he will win IA. It will help put him over the top. His Leno appearance, along with the latest poll numbers, have me believing he’ll pull this off.
I stayed up to watch Jay, too. I thought that his show did really well. I hope, however, that they’ll ditch the q&a – that was painful to watch. I flipped over to Dave and found him unnaturally boring. (I really like Dave)
I DVR’d Conan so I can watch it later today.
Back to Huck, though: he nailed it. The more debates and easy interviews for him, the better. He is easily the most well-spoken candidate in the field. He is so at ease with himself, it makes everyone else seem manufactured, with the exception of McCain and Paul. (who could manufacture someone like Paul?)
I don’t think it sounds dumb at all. Am I the only one who flashed back to Clinton playing the sax on Arsenio?
It is sad that this sort of appearance is what will get someone votes. I didn’t watch it, so I can’t comment on his policy points, but I’m pretty sure those should be much more important than how well he plays the bass or if he plays at all.
God help us all.
I don’t disagree with you on that; but thus has politics ever been, going all the way back to Julius Caesar (yes, really) and beyond. And I will say this, I’d mind a lot more if I hadn’t been more impressed with his policy riff than his bass riff–but I was.