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Former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee sought the Republican nomination for president in 2008 and now hosts his eponymous, No.1-rated weekend TV show on the Fox News channel, as well as a radio show, "The Huckabee Report." He enjoys playing bass guitar in his rock 'n' roll band, Capitol Offense, and is the author of several books, including "Character Makes a Difference: Where I'm From, Where I've Been, What I Believe" and the latest, "Simple Christmas." After being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2003, he lost more than 100 pounds and wrote "Don't Dig Your Grave With a Knife and Fork." Mr. Huckabee, 54, lives with his wife, Janet, in Arkansas. They have three grown children.
You confidently hold strong opinions. Have you always been like that?
Yeah, I think people have said of me, "Often wrong, never in doubt."
Has there ever been a time in your life when your faith was shaken?
See the Absolutely. One of those times was when I had been married less than a year. My wife was diagnosed with cancer of the spinal canal. They did not think it was operable, and we needed to prepare ourselves for the worst. They said if they could find a way to save her life they would probably have to sever the spinal cord, and she'd be a paraplegic the rest of her life. That's pretty tough. At that time I was 20 years old. It was not the scenario where we had some instant miracle and a momentary healing. It was surgery and radiation therapy and learning to walk again -- a long process. But that was 35 years ago, and [we have] three children we were told we would never have because of the radiation therapy. Those are the kinds of things that really shake you to your roots and make you determine whether your faith is real. Faith doesn't get us out of situations. It just gets us through them.
You've called yourself a "foodaholic." So how is that day-to-day battle going?
It is a battle. The last year has been a real battle for me mainly because of two things. One has been a foot issue that really curtailed my running, which was my main exercise. The other thing is just my travel schedule is nuts. I'm getting up the wee hours of every morning to catch a plane to go somewhere to make a speech or get to New York. I stay up very late at night (I'm doing radio five nights a week) in order to do commentaries, which I do three times a day on 518 radio stations in addition to weekend television. The schedule is just packed. I've picked up about 25 pounds this year, which I'm determined to get off. I've kind of got a goal by doing it in time for my daughter's wedding in May.
You've written a lot about character. What impact does the lack of character displayed by John Edwards, Mark Sanford and Tiger Woods have on the collective unconscious?
It's important for us to continue the discussion on the role that character plays in leadership. We have to be careful we don't expect leaders, whether in politics or sports or other endeavors, to be perfect. It's one thing to be flawed. We all are, but we also need them to be honest. In the case of a John Edwards, he presented himself as something he turned out not to be. Then when confronted he absolutely pointedly lied repeatedly about it. Not just to the public, that was bad enough, but to his own wife, a wife that was suffering through a life-threatening illness.
Mark Sanford and Tiger Woods both lied to their wives, too.
That's bad enough, and I know Mark very well. That broke my heart and shocked me. Part of what I think was so difficult in that one was that even when confronted and caught, it wasn't like, "Oh, I've done a horrible thing, I've got to fix this." That would be, you'd think, the reaction. Instead it was like, "Well, I hope I can make my marriage work, but it sure is hard 'cause my soulmate is this woman down in Argentina." I thought, "Oh my gosh!"
How did you handle women trying to get your attention?
Always the thought of my wife standing over me having unloaded a 15-round clip into me and asking, "Does somebody have more ammo?" [Laughs.]
OK, so it wasn't love. It was fear!
A whole lot of it, yeah. But it was love, but it was fear [laughing].
What message do you think the Republican victory in Massachusetts is telegraphing?
It is a clear message that people are absolutely fed up with government that has been dishonest with them and that has focused more on internal gamesmanship than on the problems people face and the out-of-control spending, the insensitivity toward people who are really struggling. The Democrats have to be careful not to blow this off as just a local aberration. They would do that to their own peril. The Republicans have to be careful not to for one moment believe this means that they automatically win all the elections this year. I am hoping Republicans get it for what it was and don't go around breaking their arms patting themselves on the back too much.
The Supreme Court just rejected limits on corporate campaign spending, which seems it might make politics as usual even worse.
That's not my take on it, Patricia, and I'll tell you why. Corporations already give. They do it in sometimes rather underground ways, through their executives and maybe contributions to independent groups. There are a whole lot of ways they can participate. I think this makes it a little more honest and transparent. The real problem is there needs to be an increasing level of disclosure. The disclosure needs to be immediate. In this day of the Internet every contribution should be reported publicly within 12 hours of its being deposited.
We have a strange relationship with China. It has been called our banker and it also has been accused of hacking into the computers of U.S. companies and the U.S. Defense Department -- stealing intellectual property and technology. Can you have a trade war with your banker?
The stupid thing is that we ever allowed them to become our banker. I have been one of those voices for a very long time saying I don't care how much money we make off the Chinese. It's not worth giving over our sovereignty and our security. We have made some really bad deals with the equivalent of an international loan shark. It's exactly what happens when you deal with the mob.
Mackenzie Carpenter's video program, "Omnivore," is available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
