Peggy Noonan on Mike Huckabee
Everyone said Mike Huckabee was a big dope to leave Iowa Wednesday to fly to L.A. to be on Jay Leno, but did you see him on that thing? He got off a perfect line on why he's doing well against Romney: "People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off." The studio audience loved him. And you know, in Iowa they watch "The Tonight Show" too.
Mr. Huckabee likes to head-fake people into thinking he's Gomer Pyle, but he's more like the barefoot boy of the green room. He's more James Carville than Jim Nabors.
What we have learned about Mr. Huckabee the past few months is that he's an ace entertainer with a warm, witty and compelling persona. He won with no money and little formal organization, with an evangelical network, with a folksy manner, and with the best guileless pose in modern politics. From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.
They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools' squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don't admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don't need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.
They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues--taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia--and missing the central issue: again, our culture.
Global Food Prices Up Sharply; 37 Countries Face Food Crises
The soaring cost of food is threatening millions of people in poor countries, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned.
Food prices have risen an unprecedented 40% in the last year and many nations may be unable to cope, the agency says.
It is calling for help for farmers in poor countries to buy seeds and fertiliser, and for a review of the impact of bio-fuels on food production.
The FAO says 37 countries face food crises due to conflict and disaster.
"Without support for poor farmers and their families in the hardest-hit countries, they will not be able to cope," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
The agency's food price index has jumped almost 40% from last year, hitting its highest level since its inception in 1990.
The increases are partly due to droughts and floods linked to climate change, as well as rising oil prices boosting demand for bio-fuels, the FAO said.
Changing diet in fast-developing nations such as China is also considered a factor, with more land needed to raise livestock to meet increasing demand for meat.
The Tiresome Subject of One’s Own Affairs
I just find that sitting down by a tree or a rock and contemplating the natural scene, any natural scene, in an appreciative, quietly passive way can distract one for a while from the tiresome subject of one's own affairs. Not that this is something I do all that often. My interest in the natural world has always tended to be too involved, too protective and meddlesome, to allow much time for just sitting around looking at things. But whenever I have managed it, I've come back to myself afterwards feeling more calm and clear-headed, more capable of dealing with the way of the world than when I left.
-- Don Schueler, A Handmade Wilderness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 171-72.
