The Honorable Mike Huckabee                                                                                   Former Governor                                                                                                       State of Arkansas

Mike Huckabee - Employment- Former Governor, State of Arkansas; former Lt. Governor, State of Arkansas; former chairman and vice chairman, National Governors Association; former pastor of several Southern Baptist churches in Arkadelphia, Texarkana, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas; former president, Arkansas Baptist State Convention. Works- Co-author, Character is the Issue (1997); Kids Who Kill (1998); Living Beyond Your Lifetime (2000); Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork (2005); From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 Stops to Restoring America's Greatness (2006). Special Mention- Awarded one of Governing Magazine's Public Officials of the Year for 2005; named one of the five best governors in America by Time Magazine; received, AARP Impact Award; created ARkids First program, providing access to health care for tens of thousands of uninsured children; Ouachita Baptist University recently renamed its School of Education the Michael D. Huckabee School of Education; considering a run for the 2008 Presidential nomination. Education- B.A., Ouachita Baptist University; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Personal- Father of three; married to Janet; they live in Hope, Arkansas.

"From Hope to Higher Ground"

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Very nice to be here.  Thank you very much. The introduction was very gracious and kind, but I do want to put you at ease on a couple of things.  Anytime I am introduced as a person who has been a Southern Baptist pastor, I see that painful look in the eyes of the crowd, and people are afraid of two things. One, the program is going to last a long time, and the other is I will probably take an offering. So will the ushers please come forward?

We will go ahead and get that out of the way.

I always tell people, to put you at ease, sometimes when I speak and especially when I first started running for office, people were just amazed that a person who had been a pastor had also been in the communications business in advertising, but as a pastor, they really were surprised that somebody would run for office.

          And I never will forget the lady that came up to me and said, "Mister, is it true that you are an ordained minister?"  I said, "Actually, that is correct," and she said, "Well, let me ask you something.  Are you one of those narrow‑minded Baptists who think only Baptists will go to heaven?"  I said, "Lady, actually, I am more narrow than that because I don't think all the Baptists are going to make it."

But my favorite was a little town in Arkansas called Malvern, and they have a Brickfest every summer.  Now, you know it is a small town when they celebrate the making of a brick, but at Brickfest, I was out campaigning because that is what politicians in Arkansas do around the courthouse square at a festival, and I was visiting and most people were being pretty nice.

          This lady, however, came up, and she said, "I just want you to know that I am not voting for you.  I haven't before, I'm not now, and I would never vote for you.  Sir, I don't think people like you ought to be getting into politics and running for office.  In fact, sir, I wouldn't vote for you if you were St. Peter."  I said, "Lady, that's fine because you know what, if I were St. Peter, you wouldn't even be in my district."

It didn't really matter because she was pretty undecided anyway.  So I don't think it would have affected her vote a whole bunch.

This is a real honor and privilege to be here with many people in this room that I have known for many years.  I had the great privilege of running into Paul Weyrich whose cassette tapes I used to listen to while driving around in a Chevrolet Chevette in 1980 and 1981 as I cut my political teeth listening to that; Judge Paul Pressler, who I had known literally for 30 years this summer, as a part of a great movement to help theological conservatism in the Southern Baptist Convention where we both have been a part, several others of you I have known through the years, and you have had great influence in our country.

And I guess I am here tonight, one of the reasons, to share with you a heart and a vision because I am really concerned about where our country is, but I am far more concerned about where it's headed if we don't see a revival of the same kind of spirit and principles that I remember listening to on those cassette tapes and that I remember working with people like Judge Pressler, to see happen not only in the theological, but the political world.

And just to share with you why it is important to me is because I didn't grow up as a child of privilege.  I grew up like most Americans did, where every bit of the journey ahead was a struggle.

As a kid, my dad didn't have a seat on the stock exchange.  He had a seat on the fire truck, and he worked as a mechanic on his days off.  He never even graduated high school, nor had any male in my entire family lineage above him.

When I graduated high school from Hope, Arkansas ‑‑ and yes, by the way, I really did grow up in Hope, Arkansas.  Clinton spent a few years there, and then he moved off, but quite frankly, it was never politically expedient to say, "I believe in a place called Hot Springs," where he really grew up.  So that is why he didn't tell anyone that.

And a lot of people have asked me, by the way, about if it is true I come from Hope and I run for President, how on earth would I ever expect the people of America to elect another person from Hope, and I have already got the answer to that.  I have got a great campaign slogan:  "Give us one more chance."

But I wanted to say that as a kid growing up, what I really remembered was I lived in not just the geographical place called Hope.  I lived in a world where hope really was what gave us our sense of who we were as Americans.  That is what this country is.  It is a land where a kid like me at eight years old was taken by his father to meet the Governor of Arkansas because my father said, "Son, the Governor is coming to dedicate a lake, and you may spend your whole life and never meet the Governor."  His son became one.  That is what happens in America.

This is a place where dreams come true.  This is a place where a kid can grow up who doesn't have two nickels to rub together and can end up owning a company and employing hundreds of people and leaving a legacy.  This is the kind of place where it doesn't matter where you start.  It matters where you're going. But what worries me is that today when I speak to audiences and I look out in the faces of the crowd and I say “how many of you are living better today than you ever imagined you would when you were a kid,” and every hand goes up.  My hand is the highest one in the air because nobody I can imagine has come further than I have.

And then I ask this question.  I say, "How many of you think your kids are going to be living better than you?"  You know what's scary?  Not many hands go up, and I have spoken to audiences where not a single hand goes up in the room.  If there is any reason in the world for us to get excited, energized, and on fire to do something significant in this next election cycle, it is because I don't want another generation growing up thinking that the greatest generation has already lived and is about to die.

I would like to believe that the greatest generation of Americans has yet to even be born. But the only way that happens is when we have a renewal in our spirit and in our sense of hope and optimism about where the future is, and that we do understand that as long as we adhere to the principles that made us a great nation, we will be a great nation. The day we turn from those is the day we start losing that hope, and ladies and gentlemen, with all due respect, I suggest that that is exactly what has started to happen.  The 2006 election cycle was a great spanking that we richly deserved and we need to learn from.

When I was a kid, we didn't have light discipline.  We had whoopings.  In South Arkansas, a spanking was really more a whooping.  Now, I hope I am not offending anybody's sensibilities on that, but that's just the way it worked in those days.  I tell people my father was a great patriot, a man of extraordinary patriotism.  He'd lay on stripes, I'd see stars, patriotism at its heart.

But it didn't ruin me.  It gave me a sense of understanding what the rules were, and I understand the rules were to be honest and to be thoughtful and to get an education and to work hard and to realize that nobody was going to hand me anything.  I might have to struggle a little harder than other folks, and I did.  I paid my way through high school and college working in radio stations, and I worked 40 hours a week in a radio station when I was in college, got through in two years and three months, not because I was smart, but because I was too poor to spend the four years there.  I needed to get through sooner.  Did that ruin my life?  No.  It made my life.

The great things about this country are that it gives us opportunity, and it all goes back to that sense of hope, but it also is a place where the real hope comes from understanding that the greatest empowerment is not the empowerment of government, but the empowerment of the individual.

I didn't grow up a Republican.  I grew up a Democrat because there weren't any Republicans in Hempstead County when I came along, except a handful that had moved from up north and a couple that had been messed with, and everybody else was a Democrat just out of sheer default.

I became a Republican as a teenager, after reading a book called "A Choice, Not an Echo," by Phyllis Schlafly, and realizing in 1968, the country was beginning to make a definite turn, and by 1972 in high school, I was Richard Nixon's South Arkansas youth chairman because I thought, "Good heavens, George McGovern as President?  Tell me we're kidding."  Fortunately, we were kidding.  He didn't get elected, thank goodness.

But I became one because I realized that every opportunity that I had had in life didn't come because government did something for me.  It's because government got out of the way and gave me the opportunity to get on a path that gave me the chance to practice what has always given business its start, and that is the entrepreneurial spirit of creativity and vision and drive and hard work.

Sometimes I look at what is happening in Washington today, I see this utterly polarized and completely paralyzed government that seems more intent on feeding itself than they are on making sure that the people in the districts are able to survive and thrive.  I sometimes think that the ghost of Alexander Hamilton has come from the grave to recapture this nutty idea of overly centralized Federal Government at the expense of the power of the States and the individuals who live there.

I thought that battle had been won years ago when Thomas Jefferson was able to say that if it is not a power that is already written into the Constitution, it stays with the States, but with REAL ID and a President usurping the power of the National Guard, with the kind of regulatory preemption and tax preemption that the Federal Government wants to enact upon the States, as a governor for 10‑1/2 years in my State, I started saying who's minding the store? And I see the concerns that have affected us out there with the middle class, where people can keep working harder, but they are not sure they are getting ahead. And, in fact, in many cases, the middle class works harder, and they are not getting ahead, and they are not sure anybody is paying attention.

The day the middle class in this country finds that their hard work doesn't help them get to the next rung of the ladder is the day we all better buckle up and get ready for a rough ride ahead, because that is when the Democrats and the liberals will have a heyday with the people of America.

We have got to recapture the idea that this is a great country because we are a culture and a civilization that is always focused on our celebration of life.  When people say what is the great distinction between our civilization and that of the Middle East by those who would destroy us, look at it.  When our children die, we grieve and we mourn.  They strap bombs to the chest of their child and send them in as a sacrifice and celebrate the death as martyrs.

It is the difference between a culture of life and a culture of death, and one of the reasons that the pro-life position is not just a political position, it is a position of extraordinary importance to the future of this country, is because the sanctity of human life is at the very heart and soul of what has made us a unique country.  We value life in the womb, and we value it after it's born.

And I say that one of the things as a pro-life person who has been pro-life long before I had been political, a position that has not changed and has been backed up by legislation after legislation, passed in a Democrat State like Arkansas where 86 percent of the elected officials still are Democrat and where my election as a lieutenant governor was only the fourth Republican in 150 years elected to a statewide office, I can tell you that even in that environment, the reason that those bills, those laws were so very important is because it needs to reflect who as a culture and a civilization we are.  People that remember that we elevate, we celebrate, and we commemorate every human life as being important because we do believe that it is a part of the providence of God, as we believe our own country is.  We have to believe that there is an extraordinary terror out there in the world, and we know that.  The war in Iraq has gotten this country incredibly divided, but the cut‑and‑run philosophy certainly isn't what any of us would want.  But clearly defining the goals and making sure that we recognize that someday we need to render the power of the Middle East irrelevant by no longer being dependent upon their oil, no longer being dependent upon them holding us hostage while we develop our own domestic sources of energy has to be a national priority, and please don't tell me we can't do that.  The same nation that within a decade put a man on the moon, when before we had about the technology of bottle rockets, is certainly a nation that can put its mind, its will, and its energy in resources to work, so that we can tell the tyrants of the Middle East or Venezuela or Russia, "Thanks, but no thanks.  Drink your oil.  Take a bath in it, but we won't be needing it anymore because our farmers will grow it, our wind will blow it, and our sun will shine on it, our hydrogen cells will provide it, but we won't be needing what you have anymore." Nothing would help us to bring a greater sense of our own empowerment than that message.

As a person who loves this country very much, I love it because I believe that we are a country that has always said we are going to take care of our own people, but if we are going to take care of our own people, we have to start with some real security in this nation, starting at our own borders.

It is inconceivable to me that last Saturday when I got on the airplane in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I went to the airport, I was asked to show photo ID, even though the person who asked me called me by name and asked me how I was doing.

I had to take my shoes off, and they let these big flat feet walk all over the airport and probably make a dent in the concrete by the time I got through it.

Every TSA agent, every Delta ticket agent, every employee at the airport knew who I was, spoke to me, called me by name. Some of them called me other names, but I will leave that alone.

But my point is I went through several layers of security, gates, fences, locks because even though I pose no threat whatsoever to that aircraft, the airport, or anybody on that premise, those were the rules.

Now, tell me why it doesn't make some sense that we have borders that are secure, so that if someone comes, we are not going to keep them out necessarily, we are going to welcome people that we actually need in our economy, but we have a right to put a door there and say, "Before you come, we'd like to check you out a little bit and make sure you don't have a criminal background, a communicable disease, and we would like to know who you are, why you are here, what you are going to do, and how long you plan to do it."

Folks, if we can't do that, what on earth can we expect for the future of our children if we provide no greater security than that?  But at the end of the day, I always want to remind people, thank God I still live in a country where every night I can get on my knees and be grateful I am in a country that people are trying to break into, rather than a country people are trying to break out of, and that is one thing I will always celebrate about America.

When I was governor, I never will forget in the first few months, I turned to our Department of Finance director, and I asked him.  I said, "When is the last time we've had a broad‑based major tax cut?"  He looked at his deputy.  He looked back at me, and he says, "Well, Governor, we've never had one," and they hadn't, 160 years never really had one.  We passed the first one in 1997, 90 different tax cuts and decreases in the course of 10‑1/2 years.

Now, somewhere you are going to read that Mike Huckabee raised taxes.  Well, read that, but let me give the other side of that story.

Two of them, our voters voted on them, one for roads, one for conservation.  One, I didn't sign, in fact, opposed, got credit for having passed it, which I didn't, didn't get credit for repealing it, which I did.

Another one was a fee increase of the State Police where we increased the cost of a license because it hadn't gone up since 1969, and the fee increase of $2.50, which hadn't increased since 1969, salvaged the State Police Insurance Program, and once because the Supreme Court ordered us to put more money in education ‑‑ and this was after we had cut 11 percent out of a State budget that only had a 9‑percent margin because 91 percent of our general revenue budget at the State is a budget that is tied up in three things, education, Medicaid, and prisons.  Everything else in the State budget is in that final 9‑percent margin.  We had cut 11 percent during the recession of 2001‑2002 and then got hit with a Supreme Court order in December of 2002 to spend another half‑billion dollars on education for adequacy and for equity.

We had had an experience 50 years ago with an Arkansas governor that defied the courts in an education issue, and I wasn't going to be the one who did that again.  That didn't turn out so well.

My point is that I was also the governor who when the liberals were trying to say let's raise taxes, let's raise taxes, I said, "You know what, there is nothing in the law that says you don't have any reason not to pay more.  So here is what you can do.  If you don't think you are paying enough, you just write a check for whatever amount will make you feel good and send her on in," and I got envelopes printed, and I called it the Tax Me More Fund, and everywhere I went to speak, I'd hold up an envelope and I'd say, "Folks, if you are not paying enough taxes here in Arkansas, let me give you an envelope, and you can just fill it up.  Write a check, put in cash, because we will tax you more if that is what you think you need."

And it was really wonderful because I'd go and I'd always say, "Anybody need an envelope?  Anybody here?  People are telling me at the Capitol, we have got to raise the taxes.  Anybody need an envelope?"  It is amazing how few people really wanted one.  I think after a year and a half, we had $1,100 raised.  That is how much more Arkansas people wanted to pay in taxes, and a thousand of that was from a liberal State Senator who I was happy to take his $1,000 and put it in the fund.

The problem in America is not that we are paying too few taxes, but our Congress is spending way too much money and spending it on things that were never intended to be a part of our expenditures, a lot of it because they want to do things that should never be a part of a Federal budget anyway.  It ought to be left to a State.

The Constitution is pretty clear about what we ought to be doing and what we ought not to be doing, and the first thing is provide for security and safety of our citizens.  When we do that, then we can talk about some other things.

Ladies and gentlemen, this country has got to be restored again to its sense of hope, and that is what I want to share with you tonight.  When people ask me why on earth did you file papers to run for President, nobody knows who you are, I understand that.  I am not a complete fool.  I know I walk into this room tonight, and most people had to look on my name card to see who I was, and even then said, "And who is he?"  That's all right.

When I was first elected lieutenant governor, I will never forget I was in a little place called Mountain View, Arkansas, this little town up in the Ozarks.  They have a big festival called the Ozark Folk Festival.  Now, I had just been elected in the special election in '93.  I was running for re-election in '94, and I was campaigning in April of that year on the courthouse square, and this is a true story.  I promise you I am not making this up, not that anything else I have said tonight I have made up either.

I am walking around talking to people, and they are very nice and kind, and I am thinking this is going well.  Then I see an elderly gentleman.  He is standing over by his pickup truck.  He is wearing some bib overalls.  He is just perfect for Mountain View.  He is standing over there basking in the sunshine.  I thought I'd go over there and strike up a conversation.  So I did.

I put my hand out, and I said, "Sir, I am Mike Huckabee, and I sure hope I will have your vote for lieutenant governor." He looked me up and down real good.  He said, "Well, partner, you going to get my vote all right because that guy we got down there now, he ain't worth a dern."

My first thought was he's just being funny.  I looked at his face, and I realized that man had no idea I was that guy down there now.  What do you say to a guy who has just told you that?  I did the only thing I knew to do.  I just said, "Sir, I am proud you are going to give me your vote, and you're right about that guy we got down there now.  He ain't worth a dern."

I understand what it's like to be in obscurity, but I also understand that this country is a country that looks for leadership, and I believe it is going to be a country that looks for people who articulate the ideas and the message, and I also believe it is going to be about an election that is going to be more about being vertical than horizontal, and let me explain.

In a book I have just written called "From Hope to Higher Ground," I say that the American people think differently than the people in Washington.  In Washington, everybody thinks that life is horizontal, it is all left, right, liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, and we tend to think that way, live that way, and polarize that way, but out there in the real world where folks like me grew up, sitting around the dinner table at night, the average family isn't talking things that sound so horizontal.  I'll tell you, they're talking things that sound vertical, and they want to know is this leader going to light up my children's future or is he going to tear it down and destroy it.

Those who can remember, the greatness of this country is not in its government, but in its people. It’s in their vision and their capacity and their ability to see things that have never been and dream them into being, whether it is a Sam Walton creating out of a little five‑and‑dime store, an empire called Wal‑Mart, or whether it is an uneducated eighth‑grade dropout by the name of J.B. Hunt who created the largest trucking company in America and became one of the great entrepreneurs of this country, or whether it was a man who came back from World War II and was ashamed that his father had gone bankrupt. So he swept the floors himself in a little dry goods store in Nashville, Arkansas, until he could pay back every dime that his father owed, and that became the Dillard’s Department Store.  That is what has made this country great.  It is not the government, but it's the people who just had an honest sense about getting their job done and doing it well.  That is why I think this country has got to once again turn to those values that made us great.

By the way, let me be clear with you.  I hear some people saying, "Are you a compassionate conservative?"  I have come to the understanding that to say that you have to attribute an adjective in front of it is defying the term itself.  In and of itself, to be a conservative means that we want to conserve what is best.  That is compassion at its heart.

So, when I am asked the question am I a compassionate conservative, I would say I am a conservative, and that means I am compassionate because I am compassionate about wanting to make sure that my children have the kind of future that I had. I want them to grow up believing that if they want to be President, they can be, too, because when people like me get elected, you know what? It gives hope to every little kid sitting out in a grade school with a hole in his jeans and shoes that really need to be shined and probably won't ever get to be.  It gives hope to the kid who is on a School Lunch.  It gives hope to the kid who didn't get to take good vacations or drive a nice car and live in a nice house, and if we ever keep that going, there is a great generation of young Americans yet to be born who will do things we can't even imagine being done because they will be hungry to do it. And if we take that away from them, we don't just lose an election.  We lose a civilization, and that would be a tragedy.  I tend to think our best days are still ahead.

I love this story.  A lady called her pastor.  She said, "Pastor, I want you to come visit with me.  I got something very urgent to talk to you about."  He went over to her home.  They sat down and started talking, and she says, "Pastor, I've been to the doctor this week, and I'm afraid I've got some bad news.  The doctors told me that I have got a disease from which I am not going to survive.  I want to get everything in order, so my family doesn't have to go through all the pain and the problems preparing for my service.  So I want you and I to sit down and talk about my funeral."

          He thought what a thoughtful thing on her part.  As they discussed it, she said, "Now, I have one thing that I am going to ask you to do that is quite unusual."  He thought to himself, I've heard it all, she is not going to have anything that unusual, but go ahead.  And then she stunned him when she said this, "Pastor, when they have me placed in the casket and people come by for the viewing, I don't want a handful of flowers laid up on my chest to be held.  Here is what I want.  I want you to place in my hand ‑‑ and don't let anybody talk you out of this.  You do this, Pastor.  I want you to place a fork in my hand, and I want to lay in that casket with a fork," and he thought to himself, that is the most unusual request I think I've ever heard.

          She says, "I know what you're thinking.  You're wondering what on earth?  She must have something that has affected her mind."  She said, "No, Pastor.  That's not it at all.  You see, I want to make a closing statement with my life, and here is how I want it to be.  When they come by, they are going to all wonder what in the world is the fork doing in her hand, and you wait until the last part of the funeral, and then you tell them.  Pastor, you know, when we have those church pot luck dinners, everybody brings all that food, and we go through the line, and we load up our plates with the ham and the beans and the potato salad and all the stuff that people have made.  We eat more than we should and more than we think we can, and we finish it, and we push back from the table thinking we couldn't hold another bite.  Oh, it was good.  And about that time, a lady comes out from the kitchen, and she leans down and whispers in our ear these three words, 'keep your fork.'  And what does that mean?  That means it's not quite over yet.  Keep your fork means that even though you may think you're full, there is cherry pie and chocolate cake and eclairs and all sorts of things that the ladies have made on the dessert table that hadn't been touched yet, so keep your fork because it's not over.  Keep your fork because as good as you think that was, the best is yet to come."

And ladies and gentlemen, what I'd like to say to this country is rather than it's all over, look in the rear‑view and take a glance back.  America has had its great days.  I think the message we need to take to America is very simple.  Keep your fork.  The best is yet to come.

Thank you very much for letting me visit with you tonight.  God bless you.

MODERATOR:  Well, Governor Huckabee has agreed to answer some questions. We would like to invite any of you who would like to ask questions of the Governor to raise your hand.  I've got a lady right here with a microphone, and as usual, we would like to make sure that we encourage you to make your questions short and succinct and respectful and no endorsements tonight.

ATTENDEE:  Governor Huckabee, I would like to hear more about your plan to help the middle class change their lot in life.

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  I think the number‑one thing is to make sure that the tax system is fair, flat, family‑friendly, and finite.  That is the best way I can put it, and right now, a lot of people are working harder, but they are not necessarily getting ahead because their costs are going up. It is everything from energy to their basic necessities, and part of what has to happen is that we see that education really starts working, so that when they get an education, their wages are going to go up.

We are losing the sense of a creative society.  The greatest single thing that we can teach in education is not just to input data from a book to a brain.  It is to help kids to learn how to learn, to be creative.

One thing I think that has to be a part of that ‑‑ and I know it may seem like an indirect answer to how do we improve the middle class -- but we have done some stupid things in this country in education, one of which was to cut music and art out of our school curriculum. The reason I say that is because if we don't develop both the left and the right sides of the student's brain, then you end up with only a handful of people with access to music and art learning the whole skills that God had given them to be creative.  It is an integral part of a good education to have a solid curriculum, so that every child understands that his or her talent can be touched.

When we destroy that, when we don't allow that, when we only are building football teams and kids who have private access to a total sense of creativity, we really don't stimulate the kind of thought and resilience that makes this a great country.

From a policy standpoint, a lot of the concerns I believe that have to be addressed are simple things like infrastructure, where we have put a lot of money on earmarks, but we have not done anything to really focus on a strategic plan of roads, bridges, airports.  We have a lot of families who end up snarled in traffic, and I don't think we know the social consequences.  We know that there is energy shot up in the air.  We know that there is pollution and a lot of waste.  What we haven't really calculated is how much we are losing because Mom never gets to her daughter's dance recital or Dad never gets to the son's soccer game because they are sitting on an airplane two hours late or they're in traffic an hour and a half each way to work.

All of those things, I think contribute to the kind of loss of the sense of community, which is really the heart and soul of what has been a middle class that had a vision to improve and who could improve.

ATTENDEE:  Governor, I appreciated your remarks.  Thank you very much for being here. My question is on economic issues, specifically on the minimum wage.  Do you think that you made a mistake in raising the minimum wage, and if not, would you consider as President actually raising the minimum wage even further?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  The issue in Arkansas was this.  We had a group that had it placed virtually on the ballot, and it was going to be passed by around 82 percent if it got on the ballot, but it was going to be placed in the Constitution, and it would have an index that would force it to go up every year.

To head that off, Republicans and Democrats and the business community all agreed to statutorily raise the minimum wage in Arkansas, but that way, it wouldn't be constitutional, and it did not have a built‑in index.

The real truth is a minimum wage from an economic policy standpoint is not good economic policy because the marketplace would better gauge and judge it than would an artificial floor like a minimum wage. But that issue had already been decided that we were going to have one, and if we were going to have it, it needed to be more realistic, and it hadn't been raised since 1997, and it was a very hard argument to say that it shouldn't be when there was no way in the world that anything else had frozen in time in terms of price quite like that.  So it was a matter of doing maybe that which was not ideal, but better than what was a whole lot worse, and it was on a fast track.

With our State, again, when I first came into office, we had 11 out of 100 Republicans in the House, 4 out of 35 Republicans in the Senate.  I didn't major in math in college, but I can count to 51, and sometimes it was defense more than offense, and that was basically what we ended up doing there.

When the business community signed on, the Chamber of Commerce and NFIB and all the other business groups and said, you know, it is better to take control of the minimum wage than have it take control of us. It really turned out to be about the only option that we felt we had.

ATTENDEE:  Thank you, Governor. I want to ask you.  You made a comment a while ago about the Supreme Court forced you to raise taxes for education.  I don't really understand that concept, because if you don't have it, you don't have it.  What happened 50 years earlier that made you not want to fight that battle and just say, basically, "I can't raise taxes because we don't have it"?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Basically, the reason was that we could not legitimately argue that we were providing an adequate or an equitable education.  Our per‑pupil expenditures weren't really adequate, and they certainly weren't equitable, and in an honest reading of the Constitution, there was no way that we could justify it.  Our teachers' salaries were some of the worst in the country.

What we did decide, though, if we were going to have to spend more money, we would get more out of it, and so here is what we did.  We raised the standard substantially, and since 1998, we have had improvement in every test score, in every grade level.

Education Week magazine, a month ago, said that Arkansas was one of three States that had seen unusual improvement out of the norm in terms of our student achievement, and we have gone from near the very bottom at like 49 in national scoring to the middle, and we did that in a relatively short time.

Our teacher salaries are up, but the expectations are up.  So it has been a matter of spending money, but not spending it without some expectation and raising standards, measuring, and having accountability. And again, it has resulted, I think, in a dramatically different kind of opportunity for the kids of our State who have a future that didn't have it before. Before, they had an education that didn't let them compete with kids from other cities, other States, and now we are competing with kids all across the world, but it was a matter that we had trimmed down everything we could in the State budget.  Eleven percent is a pretty hefty cut when your margin is 9, but at that point, when the Supreme Court said you have to have an adequate education, adequacy will be defined by a study, and the studies show that we were about $1,500 per student away from that.

We didn't have a whole lot of options other than a court defiance, and I guess we could have done that, but frankly, I think that would have been a huge mistake for us to have just defied the court and said we're not going to do it. And the reason I think that is because as I looked at the educational achievement and quality, it was hard to argue that we really were doing all that we should be doing to properly educate those kids.

Now I can honestly look you in the eye and tell you our kids are getting not only an equitable, but an adequate education, and they are going to be competitive, and it is going to raise the standard of living for the people in my State who have long been impoverished.

ATTENDEE:  What happened 50 years earlier?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Oh, that was when Orval Faubus stood on the steps of Central High School and refused to let the nine African‑American children into the school, and the National Guard was federalized and brought in.  It was quite a messy scene on the lawn of Central High.  That is what I am referring to.

ATTENDEE:  Wouldn't that have been an opportunity to introduce school choice?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  In 1957?

ATTENDEE:  No, no.  When you were [inaudible] ‑‑

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Oh, we have school choice in Arkansas.  We do have school choice.

ATTENDEE:  ‑‑ and lower the cost of education in school choice.

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  We have school choice.  We also started charter schools.  That had never really been a part of our educational system.  So that has been something else.

I was also the first governor to appoint a home school parent to the State Board of Education.  That was not without some controversy, but we have greatly liberalized home school law, so that parents who wanted that option would be able to choose it without a lot of regulatory interference by the parents, and our laws in Arkansas actually became a model for many other States in giving people as parents that option.

ATTENDEE:  Governor, I am curious to know if you were President, what kind of judges you would appoint.  Now, the, quote-unquote "right" answer to that is I would appoint judges who would interpret the law and not make the law. What I really want to know is what kind of process would you go through to make sure that you did get a Scalia or Thomas?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Well, I would appoint judges who interpreted and didn't make the law, and then I would make sure they were like Scalia and Thomas, my heroes.

Actually, Scalia is my judicial hero, and I have duck hunted with him, which is safer than duck hunting with Dick Cheney, I have discovered.

That probably wasn't very nice, was it?

I guess the best thing to do is to say what kind of judges would I appoint, what kind of judges did I appoint when I had the opportunity to appoint them, and the kind of judges are Leon Holmes, who is now picked by the President to be a Federal judge, one of the strongest pro-life, pro-family, conservative, rock‑solid constitutional lawyers anywhere in the country.

Lavenski Smith who was on my staff, who grew up with me in Hope, Arkansas, who I believe one day will be a Supreme Court justice, he is an African‑American lawyer.  He worked his way through college as a janitor in a shopping mall, and sometimes lived in borrowed bedrooms from people, so he could get through. He’s an absolutely brilliant legal mind, and he defies all the stereotypes of a person who has had to scratch out his living, but he is as conservative and pro-family, pro-life as anybody could possibly be, and I appointed him to the State Supreme Court and later to the Public Service Commission, and then later, President Bush picked him to be on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a brilliant jurist and young.  He's 49 years old, and he has got a great future ahead of him.

I could name others, but those are the kinds of people that it is easier for me to tell you what I have done and have credibility than to tell you what I would do, and you have no idea whether it is the truth, because I often think sometimes we need to look at the root to determine the fruit, and if you want to know what a guy will do, look at what he has done, and that would be what I would honestly answer you.

ATTENDEE:  Ever since I can remember, Republicans or conservatives have talked about less government, more individual responsibility, and individual accountability.  It seems like the Republicans finally got in power, and the government is really compassionate, so compassionate that it is taking over everything, including education.  The Federal Government, I am talking about.

What would you do, or would you do something, to try to get it back to what the conservatives have historically stood for?  The spending and all that has just gotten out of hand.

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  One thing that I really feel has gotten off track with the current administration, with all due respect ‑‑ and I worked very hard to help them get there ‑‑ is almost forgetting about the idea that States are where governance should take place.

I am very sensitive to that because having been a governor 10‑1/2 years, I was constantly frustrated that more and more dictates were coming from the Federal Government, things that should be left to the States, and the reason I am so passionate about the States having the authority and the control is because States are laboratories of good government. When States can do things, they do it in such a way ‑‑ frankly, they are competitive with each other, but they are also uniquely taking on ideas that meet the needs of the citizens who live locally, and I think one of the Republican ideals is the best government is the most local government because it is closest to the people who are actually being governed.

I have been very frustrated with this Congress, very frustrated with this administration, in that they have taken many issues, moving them from the States, and centralizing them in a Federal authority, and the problem with that is that if you make a mistake at the Federal level, you have replicated it 50 times.

If you leave it in the States, States might come up with a grand slam idea like welfare reform or school accountability or school choice, and if it works, I can assure you all the other States will follow after it, and that is the kind of, I think, direction that makes a whole lot more sense.

I think part of it is that, with all due respect, again, President Bush seemed never to engage that sense of what it was to be a governor.  Texas governors don't have, frankly, as much of the executive power as they do in other States.  A lieutenant governor in Texas has an extraordinary level of power, but I know a lot of my fellow Republican governors and Democrat governors have been frustrated, if not appalled, that increasingly things were taken from States and pulled in toward the Federal Government, and I think it is a huge mistake.  And I think it is one of the reasons that conservatives are very discouraged because, if we make a Federal mistake, we make a big one.

If we make one in the State, we can fix it, and we can learn from each other, and you can get a new governor.  If you get a program in Congress, it is like Ronald Reagan used to say. The closest thing to eternal life we ever see on this earth is a government program started by the Feds, and he was right.

ATTENDEE:  Following up on the question there, as you know, conservatives are somewhere between disappointed, frustrated, angry, feeling betrayed, and when Goldwater and Reagan were in their prime, they would regularly stand up, publicly disagree with their Republican President, Eisenhower for Goldwater, Ford and Nixon for Reagan, publicly disagree with their Republican leaders.

A two‑part question.  Could you share with us specific examples of where you disagree with this President or the Republican‑led Congress and to any instances where you publicly did this as Goldwater and Reagan did regularly?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  I can give you a few, particularly during my tenure as chairman of National Governors' Association.  One thing that I publicly disagreed with was that the Medicaid reform was being driven by budget before policy rather than policy before budget, and it was really creating a sense in which the Federal Government was attempting to balance part of its budget off the backs of the States without regard of the impact that it would have upon governors and the States and their budgets. And unlike the Federal Government who can borrow and print money, we have to balance our budgets.  Every time I had a budget, I had to make sure it balanced.  I didn't have the luxury of spending money that we didn't actually have.

There was a frustration on the REAL ID.  I was an outspoken critic of REAL ID, and the reason is because the basic flaw in REAL ID was that you are putting a front‑line DMV worker at a State driver's license office in charge essentially of checking the documentation of somebody who might be a terrorist.

Well, in most States, we pay those people entry‑level wages. The worst thing in the world is to say that our front line of security is going to be the lowest paid person at a State level in 50 different States, and if we really need to document who people are, let's do it on a national basis and call it a passport, do whatever you got to do, but don't have 50 different programs going out there that the Federal Government orders, but didn't fund, an $11‑billion burden on States where money wouldn't follow it, but the burden would, and the big concern, if somebody went through that REAL ID Act, got through the cracks because somebody making 8 bucks an hour behind the counter didn't catch them, I'd hate to think of the incredible sense of shame and guilt that would come upon that State and that individual.

I also publicly disagreed with the President on the overuse of the National Guard in the war in Iraq.  As a governor for 10‑1/2 years, 80 percent of our guard and reserve troops have been sent to Iraq in repeated deployments.

The problem is these guys didn't sign up to be full‑time soldiers.  They signed up to be weekend or citizen soldiers and part‑time warriors.  Now, they have not complained.  They are doing their duty, and they are doing it with valor and with honor, but when you take people out of their communities and away from their families and employers for these long periods of time, get them home three months or five months, send them back out for another deployment, the footprint that that is leaving on the community is dramatic.

And I am convinced that one of the reasons that the support for the war has been increasingly eroding is because this is not a war being fought by conscripted 18‑year‑olds whose presence in the community was not really felt as a loss so much because they had not made as big an impact.  This is a war largely being fought by people who a few months ago were teaching Sunday school and serving as police officers and teachers and storekeepers, and when they go away, their absence is felt, and when there are casualties, their loss is extraordinarily felt, and I think that has been a tremendous reason why this war has created division because it is being fought largely by guard and reserve.

Now, to the credit of the guard and reserve, they are doing the greatest job possible.  They are the A team, not the B team, because they are seasoned, mature.  They understand.  They have lived a little life.  They got a few gray hairs on them.  They have raised some kids.  They have gone through some tough things.  That is a good thing, but the bad thing is they never, ever thought they would be sent over for what now is going to end up being three out of five years of their lives in war, and I think that has been a real challenge for many of them.

I am sure I could think of some other things if I put my head to it, but those are some of the things for which I have got myself in some trouble with the White House.  So I will leave it at those.

ATTENDEE:  I know since you have been a governor, you are well versed in domestic policy.  I am sure foreign policy is going to be something big in this next election.

Speak to us about ‑‑ and I know this is a huge question ‑‑ maybe the war on terror, the war in Iraq, maybe the nutcases in Iran and Korea, North Korea.  How would you deal with some of these things?  What would your philosophy be?  How would you deal with it?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Let me begin by saying I think one of the real concerns people have is what experience does a governor have in foreign affairs and would a person be able to handle that part of the job, and that is a legitimate question, but I always remind people that when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, people said this guy has been an actor and a Governor of California, what possible skills does he bring to the stage of foreign policy.

Ten years later, the Berlin Wall was down, and the Cold War was over, and the Soviets were not called the Soviets anymore.  I think he had a pretty darn good record for somebody who was not expected to do very well.

The reality is that governors are underestimated for the fact that we do have some foreign policy experience, and we are dealing with trade issues.  We have traveled.  I have been to 30 different countries over the course of my lifetime.  Many of those have been as a governor, others during my life, but not only with trade and cultural exchanges, but dealing with issues where businesses are importing and exporting.

But I think the larger issue and the one perhaps that you ask is maybe a world view or philosophy, how does America see itself in the world?  Let me use an analogy that I think perhaps best explains what I feel like has happened to our international prestige, and I know it is going to be overly simplistic, but I think it is important to share it in this way because it is a way that a lot of people in the country could understand.

When all of us grew up, there was usually one kid in the neighborhood who was just exceptional at everything.  He could jump higher.  He could run faster.  He could hit the ball every time he swung the bat.  He never made a B.  He was just exceptional in everything that he did.

Now, remember back when that kid lived in your neighborhood ‑‑ it may have been you, but when that kid lived in your neighborhood, remember if that kid really acted as good as he was, and every time he did something great, he just sort of spiked the ball at your feet or he shoved the baseball at you or he held up his test score to show how well he had done, and when a kid really is outstanding in the neighborhood and he acts like it, what do the other kids in the neighborhood think of him?  They can't stand him.  They are looking for the day when he makes a C or he drops the ball or he trips when he is running, and they just hope that one day he can taste a little of the humility and humiliation that they feel every time when his greatness really is not so much an elevation of who he is, but it is a reminder that they are not as good.

Now, same neighborhood, same kids, same great skills, but this time, instead of the kid shoving it in the face of the other kids, this time when another kid doesn't do so well, he goes over and pats him on the back side and says, "You will do better next time.  Here, chuck up on the bat a little more and swing it this way, and you will get a better chance to hit it."

In other words, the kid doesn't do it for him, but he gives him encouragement.  Then everyone in the neighborhood looks at that kid and they say, "I want to be like him," and if he wears No. 17 in high school, they all want to wear No. 17, and they emulate him.

Here is my point.  America should never, ever, ever apologize for its strength and superiority, and we are superior militarily, economically, politically.  We are the only true superpower left on the planet, and that is something that ought to give us comfort, peace, and we ought to make sure that nobody ever surpasses us in any of those things. But if we really are powerful, we must be careful that we exercise it with a simple little biblical principle called humility.

People who are great don't have to tell anybody they are great.  Everybody else already understands that.  True greatness is when greatness seeks to bring out the best in others, rather than simply contain it within one's self.

Now, how does that apply in a world of nations?  I think it's simple, that we are committed to being the strongest, most powerful nation, and we maintain it, but that we don't exercise it with a spirit of you are either with us today or you are against us because when we do that, what we are really saying to them is we are going to put you down in front of your own constituency and force you to stand up for yourself and create a conflict that shouldn't even exist.

It doesn't mean that we pay for their issues.  That is the worst thing we could do.  It is a matter of that we give them the desire to be more like us, and I hope that kind of describes an attitude, more than it is changing the actions.

ATTENDEE:  Governor, I have watched your career for many years, even before you went into politics, and I admire you. I just tell you right off before I ask these questions, you get my vote, over all the candidates I have examined so far.

But you are going to have a baggage that I can't remember anyone in my lifetime having, and that is when the ACLU and the humanists and the anti‑religious and the anti‑Christians say, "A Baptist minister?  We have separation of church and State in this country."  How would you handle that in a national campaign?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  Thank you. Frankly, I welcome the question.

Let me answer it this way.  First of all, sometimes when people ask a public official about his or her faith, the answer is "Oh, I don't let my faith interfere with my policies or the way I govern."

I want to be very clear with everyone.  When I am asked that question, my answer is never that it doesn't interfere.  In fact, I say it doesn't influence my policies.  It drives my policies, and if you want to understand me, understand my faith and you will understand pretty much how I am going to respond because it is who I am, with no apologies, and here is why.

My faith reminds me that I am a broken person, not perfect, and I live in a world of broken, imperfect people.  That gives me a sense in which I don't think I have to be right all the time, and I know I am not right all the time.  It also brings me to the table with people who are different from me, and I am willing to listen to them and learn from them, but I also know who I am.  I am comfortable in my convictions, and I don't have to take a poll or have a focus group to decide tomorrow what I need to believe next week.

When people ask specifically about what it is to be a pastor, I tell them, you know, it was the greatest preparation in the world, and the reason, in large part, that I got into politics at all was because, as a pastor, I was watching every social pathology that was going on in this country, and then I was watching the people affecting public policy in politics who didn't have a clue what was really going on in the lives and homes and families of America.

When people talk about a 14‑year‑old girl who’s pregnant and hasn't told her parents, I know her name because I talk to her.  You want to talk about a young couple who is overextended in credit?  Their marriage is on the rocks because debt has so engulfed them that they no longer can even speak to each other, and they are probably going to end a marriage that should have lasted.  I can tell you dozens of stories, and those are names and faces to me.

          The middle‑aged couple whose parents are now coming to a point where the children are the parents and the parents are the children, and the struggle that that creates and the dynamics, that is a real thing that I understand firsthand.

So, whether it is a drug addict in the family or an alcoholic or whether it is a person who has gambled away their last dime, again, you can't name a social pathology that I couldn't put a name and a face to and tell you exactly what it does to a human life and all those around it.

So I think instead of it being a detriment, I think it is an incredible advantage because there is no other profession in this country where a person deals with every level of human life from the cradle to the grave and the best and the worst than that of the person who stays in the ICU at 3 o'clock in the morning and the person who is there when the little ones are born and who hears every kind of problem from the perspective that nobody else is ever going to hear it.

So it will certainly be asked, but I will tell you this.  If having faith and being a person of faith is offensive, then I am probably not your guy.  I need to tell you that up front, and I will tell you this, when I’m asked this question, it doesn't matter whether it was Tim Russert last week on "Meet the Press" or whether it is anybody else.

I guess I am most appalled when a politician says "Oh, I don't discuss my faith" or "My faith doesn't influence me." I keep that separate.

Here is what that says to me.  If my faith is so insignificant and so inconsequential that I can compartmentalize and put it aside like a sweater on a warm day, then my faith must not drive much of my public policy. For me, it's real simple.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and as much as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me.

Folks, I found that 10‑1/2 years as governor, you take those two pillars, and everything else gets a whole lot easier when you start and you govern between those two pillars of public policy.  So that is how I would answer it.

MODERATOR:  We are going to take one more question.

ATTENDEE:  We have a real problem in our manufacturing base in this country.  I would like to know how you would address the differential of the VAT tax -- what can we do about that to equalize it to encourage people in our own manufacturing sector.

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  That is a question I am probably not well versed enough to give you an answer that would be satisfactory, and there are some things I just have to simply say I don't know, and that would be one of them.

What I would tell you is this.  I believe in free trade, but free trade isn't free if it is not fair, and one of the things that I do believe that is hurting manufacturers, because it has hurt some in my state, is that they are just not competing for the same product and the same kind of quality, but they are at a competitive disadvantage because we are not enforcing our own treaties with some of the countries that are manufacturing and sending things back, and they are not having to even engage in the same kind of adherence to laws that we are.

So whether I can answer to the specifics of the VAT, I can't tonight.  Next time you ask me that, I hope I can.

ATTENDEE:  I am very impressed with your candidacy.  My question is what is your game plan for getting elected?

GOVERNOR HUCKABEE:  That's a great one, and the real game plan is that I have got to be able to inspire some people to believe that this is not going to be just a race solely about raising money, that it has got to be a race about raising ideas, hopes, expectations, and dreams of the American people.

I have got to raise money, and I think I will raise a very respectable amount, at least I hope so, but the truth is I hear a lot of people, and it does discourage me when they say, "Well, if you don't raise $100 million by the end of the year, you are not going to be able to play," and so on. Well, my attitude is if that's the only criteria by which we are going to select a Republican candidate, then we really should just put this election on eBay and let it go to the highest bidder and be done with it. But when we do that, you are not going to necessarily select somebody with convictions and consistency.

And my question would be if we don't have someone who reflects our convictions, then what is the point?  What is the point?  And if you don't have someone who could actually win against Democrats, then what is the point?

I believe that if people would drill deep down into my life, they are going to find consistency with the convictions put into practice over a 10‑1/2‑year period as a governor in a very Democratic State where I was able to win Democrat votes, including 49 percent of African‑American votes in my State.

I am convinced that the Republican message is a winning message, but it has got to be not just kept pure, but it has got to be packaged in a way that we explain, so that we don't scare people and make them think that we are going to ruin America.  We remind them that what we are going to really do is raise the hopes and dreams of America.

I am reminded that Ronald Reagan got a lot of Democrats voting for him, not because everybody agreed with him, but they liked him, and they believe that he loved America, and they believe that he represented a part of them, and they were willing to forgive him for some things they didn't necessarily agree with because they knew that he was a man who looked like he was glad to be where he's going rather than sorry where he had been, and that is such an important part, I believe, of what we need to be thinking about in this process.

I will have good consultants.  I will do all those things that a person needs to do.  My basic strategy is I have got to have Evangelicals and what I call true people of deep faith and conviction to coalesce with me.  If that doesn't happen, it will be a tougher climb uphill.

I have got to convince the fiscal conservatives that I am not their worst nightmare, that, in fact, I do have deep convictions about fiscal conservatism, and then I have got to convince a lot of people out there in America who are what I call the vertical thinkers, which I think this is where the election is decided, not the horizontal thinkers. The election will be decided by the vertical thinkers, and I have got to be able to capture their imagination and remind them that the election is important to their future and their children's future and to more inspire them than simply just inform them. If those things happen, I believe I could be President, and if they don't, then somebody else will, and I just hope that it will be somebody who loves this country like I do and is running because they want to pass on something great to the next generation and not just because they would like to be President.