A Simple Government (26 page)

One major part of my life for the past few years has been the pleasure of writing—a task I enjoy greatly, especially when I have time for it! Once a person writes a book, the other side of the process is marketing it through extensive book tours. For example, the December 2009 tour for my Christmas book,
A Simple Christmas
, had me on a bus for twenty-one consecutive days visiting sixty-four cities and signing well over fifty thousand copies. The hours are long and the schedule beyond grueling. To keep some level of sanity on the tour, my road crew and I started making notes of some of the wonderfully funny things people would say after standing in line (sometimes for up to four hours) in order to walk quickly up to the signing table, where I would extend a handshake and sign an autograph before having to turn to the next person. I was always amazed when as many as 1,400 people lined up for a signing, even though they knew that the total time they’d have to visit with me would be measured in seconds.

But some of them certainly took the opportunity to make an impression. A lady in Oklahoma leaned over the table and said, “Honey, I want you to know I’ve never waited this long on a man.” In Kentucky, another lady said, “This is the most excited I’ve been since my wedding day.” Then there was the Tennessee lady who announced, with a great deal of pride, “I want you to know that I shaved my legs for you today.” (No, I had no intention of looking or feeling to see if she was telling the truth.) My crew helped put together a “quote of the day”—yes, these all made the cut—which we would discuss as we boarded the bus for the next stop, eating yet another meal on the road.

So this is my life today: busy, challenging, fascinating. As a reader, listener, or viewer, you and millions like you certainly play an important part in all of it. I try every day to keep in touch with the concerns of the American people. If you ever decide to help me in that goal by writing a letter or e-mailing me, pro or con, I can promise you will certainly be heard. Meanwhile, we all have a lot of work to do on maintaining those boundary stones. I hope some of the ideas I’ve discussed here will be helpful to that effort.

I
n February of 1812, a cataclysmic earthquake struck near New Madrid, Missouri, with such seismic force that it caused the Mississippi River to flow backward for a time. Almost two hundred years later, scientists fear that this fault line poses the most significant threat for another massive earthquake, which could potentially devastate St. Louis and Memphis and cut off land transportation between the eastern and western halves of the United States.

On November 2, 2010, I witnessed another major seismic shift, one that spread throughout the country and changed the course of history. As I watched the results of election day come in, I was struck by how dramatically our country had changed in just a couple of years. No longer enamored with Obama’s promise of “hope and change,” voters turned over 63 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (as of this writing 6 seats are still unconfirmed) and 7 seats in the U.S. Senate to the GOP. At the state level, a stunning 680 seats changed hands, dwarfing the 1994 election upheaval, which saw 472 seats ceded to Republicans.

Just two years ago, the Republican Party was said to be on its last leg, and pundits were not discussing
if
it would survive but how long before it would shrivel into a small and irrelevant political body. Not only is this a testament to how resilient the GOP has become, but it’s also a testament to how volatile and fluid the political playing field really is. Right now we have reason to celebrate, but Republicans who were dancing into the night and feeling a new “pep in their step” had best be mindful that as easily as they were swept in they can be swept out.

Take a lesson from the Democrats. Their biggest mistake—as exemplified by the actions of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid—was to misread the election results of 2008 as a mandate to radically “transform” everything in sight—for better or worse. Americans aren’t that keen on abrupt turns and radical overnight changes, and the Founders wisely designed our system to protect it from the whims of the moment or the many. My bass boat is nimble in the water and can turn on a dime even at high speeds, but an aircraft carrier requires miles of planning to make a 180-degree turn.

The 2010 election was a kick in the rear to the arrogant Congress that passed 2,300-page bills they hadn’t read, spent trillions bailing out bad businesses, and threw taxpayer-funded life preservers to government employees and union workers while the economy sank and pulled small businesses down with it.

I spend a lot of time talking to voters—from all over the country and both sides of the fence—and I’ve found that people actually want much less from their government than politicians think. They want the trash picked up on time, smooth roads and safe streets, good schools, a fire truck to show up promptly when needed, and secure borders to keep bad people from getting in and disturbing our peace. They want veterans to be cared for, sick people, children, and old people to be treated decently, and laws to be enforced. That’s about it. They don’t need a “supernanny” telling them what to wear, what to eat, and how many hours of sleep to get each night. They don’t want to work hard and then get penalized for their productivity so that government can reward the slackers and the failures. Americans simply don’t buy the “everyone gets a trophy” socialist nonsense that has become all too pervasive in our culture of political correctness.

As I write this, just a few days after the election, the focus has already turned to 2012. This is the part of politics that I find most irksome—that we never stop playing the “game” of who’s on top, who’s climbing, and who’s falling. The focus will soon be on money raised and machinery employed—instead of on ideas and policy innovations. The pundits will create their own biased and cynical scenarios, in which they will “create” front-runners by their perceptions based on the size of the war chests that candidates amass. They will begin to handicap the possible candidates based on what kinds of negative narratives are likely to be launched by political opponents or, in many cases, the media. I actually dread the process, having been through it before and contemplating whether to enter it again. There will be days on end of breathless news alerts that will “break” some big headline that a candidate made a C in a college math course or that a photo has surfaced showing a candidate in a ridiculous Halloween costume when he was sixteen.

America will be looking for a thoughtful, mature, seasoned, and tempered leader, but that search will likely be lost in a sea of “gotcha” games while political hacks and media hit men look for the slightest aberration in a candidate’s history. It will be like having an extreme close-up in high definition to examine each freckle, while failing to notice whether the person is even wearing pants.

Let’s hope that both political parties will do some serious growing up beyond the towel-popping pranks of legislative maneuvering and attempt to seriously address why we’re losing jobs, slipping behind in world prestige, and having to be electronically strip-searched to get on an airplane because we haven’t figured out how to rid ourselves of jihadism and terrorism.

As you finish this book (and, I hope, share it with others), I’d encourage you not to get too excited about the “hot” issues and potential candidates that are getting all the attention right now. If you think you know who the personalities and issues that will be that decide the 2012 election, just remember that four years ago, the “experts” assumed that Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton would be the nominees for their parties and the deciding issue would be the war in Iraq. Who would have thought that John McCain and a guy with a strange name like Barack Obama would joust for the White House and that the main issue would be the economy?

Instead, focus on how we can genuinely resolve the ongoing challenges of our generation by applying some simple, commonsense principles to the complex and confusing issues that dominate the headlines. When I originally set out to write this book, I didn’t intend for it to be a campaign book or a slam against the Democrats—and I hope you haven’t read it that way. Although I’ve never hidden my political persuasion, I don’t articulate a certain set of beliefs because I’m a party man, have an ax to grind, or want to be a part of the winning team. Of course, I’m as giddy as a schoolboy at the results of the recent election, but the only way to fix our country is to set aside our differences, stop the attack ads, and fully commit to doing what is best for America and the American people.

It’s just that simple.

Despite the title of this book, the task of presenting “a simple government” wasn’t so simple! In addition to attempting to distill many of the major issues America faces down to the simple principles that should be applied to confront them, I had to do thorough research to ensure that the book was accurate and sufficiently supported as well as thought provoking.

Thus, I’m indebted to many people without whose assistance I could not have completed the task on time. Janis Cherry, who served as my senior policy adviser during my presidential campaign, remains a trusted adviser and was very helpful in digging up great information for use in the book.

Pat and Laura Reeder work with me on a daily basis to help prepare the
Huckabee Report
, my radio commentary, which airs on nearly six hundred radio stations three times a day, five days a week, and were crucial in unearthing great stories and adding their unique touch. De-Wayne Hayes worked for me when I held the offices of lieutenant governor and governor before moving to Phoenix for a corporate writing gig and later enrolling in the advanced graduate study program for writers at Dartmouth. He was also vitally helpful in the latter stages of the project. Charles Flowers assisted in making sure the final manuscript was arranged in the most logical way.

I am forever grateful for the team at Sentinel for their support, encouragement, and sometimes gentle prodding to get the project brought in on time. I’m grateful for the very focused marketing team at Premiere Authors, who coordinated the grueling schedule of the book tour, because while utterly exhausting, the tour gives me the wonderful joy of meeting thousands of the good people who buy and read the book and allows me to say “thank you” in person.

As always, I am eternally grateful to my wife, Janet, my three adult children, and their spouses for their patience while I was out of touch writing and even more out of touch while on the road signing copies of the book. And, of course, I’m grateful for our three dogs, who missed me almost as much as I missed them but always made me laugh and kept my blood pressure normal.

My heartfelt thanks to them, but most of all to you for taking the time to read this book and, I hope, sharing its message with your friends and family.