Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Try reading a little history


Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, one of the second-tier candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, is in high dudgeon over former President Jimmy Carter's disparagement of the Bush administration as the worst in American history.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with Huckabee taking issue with Carter. But there is something wrong with Huckabee's claim that Carter "violated an unspoken code that you don't make personal attacks on others who currently hold the job. You just don't."

Unspoken code? It's a non-existent code, a code that lots of former presidents have paid no mind. Huckabee should crack open a history book now and again and check out what some former presidents have said about their successors (not to mention the bad things they've said about their predecessors):

Teddy Roosevelt called his immediate successor, William Howard Taft, a "puzzlewit" and a "fathead" and ran against him as a third-party candidate. TR also disparaged Taft's immediate successor, Woodrow Wilson.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, our second and third presidents, said lots of terrible things about each other.

Dwight Eisenhower was openly critical of John F. Kennedy's policies.

The first President Bush publicly knocked Bill Clinton.

Richard Nixon criticized the first President Bush.

Gerald Ford criticized the current President Bush.

Where did this nonsense arise about this unwritten code?

This whole business reminds me of Ronald Reagan's so-called 11th Commandment: "Speak no ill of a fellow Republican." But Ronnie ran against incumbent President Gerald Ford, a fellow Republican, for the GOP nomination in 1976, disparaging Ford at least by implication.

Reagan's challenge to Ford, and his failure to bust butt for the party's ticket in the general-election campaign, contributed to Ford's loss to Jimmy Carter.


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