…and Why He Needs to Learn it for 2012.

A charismatic candidate, with the ability to reach out to minorities, and a stated desire to move beyond the party leader idolized by the rank and file. A “big society” conservative, unwilling to talk about the issues nearest and dearest to the firebrands in his base, but forced to do so by circumstances. A party leader seen as the most electable alternative—particularly in head-to-head match-ups with his opposition—who eventually triumphs, but at a high cost.

If this saga, that of British Tory Party leader David Cameron, sounds familiar, it should. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and in early 2011, it looks like David Cameron’s story might just rhyme with the 2012 presidential candidacy of Mike Huckabee.

The similarities between Huck and David are legion, and they represent both positive and negative qualities that these candidates share. Both have made minority outreach, and softening the image of their party, a hallmark of their political careers. Of course, they went about it in slightly different ways—I don’t expect Huckabee to announce he’s not a global warming skeptic or back off from his conservative immigration stance—but the pillar both men seemed most ready and willing to abandon from the old party orthodoxy was economic conservatism. Both were also quick to announce the death of the old Reagan and Thatcher consensus within each party, a fact which helped differentiate Huck from his competitors in 2008, and was more successful in gaining Cameron the victory in his party leadership struggle. Both Huck and Cameron have “base issues”. Rank and file Tories were suspicious of Cameron’s new “big society” project, and many conservatives within the Republican Party remain wary of Huckabee’s lack of fiscal conservatism. Neither man was particularly experienced on foreign policy, but for Cameron, who can simply find his party’s brightest light on foreign policy issues and make him or her foreign secretary, this is less of a problem. Huckabee’s weakness on this issue will have to be overcome with good foreign policy staff work, and the selection of top-shelf surrogates.

More centrally, however, I think there’s a philosophical continuity between Huckabee and Cameron. Cameron calls it “big society” conservatism; Huck doesn’t have a name for it. At it’s core, this philosophy, I think, tries to go beyond the dynamic of individual-versus-government, and speak up for the mediating structures (church, family, community), which sit between these two polar opposites. Rick Santorum, in his controversial book It Takes A Family, makes a similar argument. There have always been conservatives like this in the Anglo-American tradition, but in the fusion of conservatism and classic liberalism, communitarian conservatives have tended to get lost in the shuffle. This is probably a shame, as the sort of virtuous free society envisioned by libertarian individualists almost certainly requires such mediating structures to function.

But Cameron and Huckabee (and to an extent George W. Bush before them), have a unique take on communitarian conservatism. Since government, they argue, has done a great deal to wreck these mediating structures, it is up to government to fix them. And both Huckabee and Cameron are comfortable using the power of the federal government directly to create the conditions which foster such communitarian regeneration, in ways which make limited government advocates nervous.

Ironically, I think Huckabee may face some of the same challenges in his 2012 race which Cameron did in the 2009 British elections. First, of course, Huckabee would have to (A) decide to run and (B) win the nomination. For Cameron, these two hurdles did not exist, since the British parliamentary system picks it’s party leader long before elections are called (those bemoaning the length of American campaigns and the “permanent campaign” often forget that, in countries with shorter campaign seasons, party leaders are chosen by parliamentary cadres, card-carrying members and/or back-room wheeler dealers). Assuming Huckabee can overcome these two uniquely American hurdles, he still must face the factor which almost sank David Cameron: circumstance.

It is almost a truism, and no less accurate for all that, that candidates almost never get to talk about the things they want to, when running for office. This was certainly the case for David Cameron, who was forced to pivot from the big society programs and kinder gentler Toryism which were his hallmark, to an aggressive deficit-cutting, immigration-curtailing candidate reminiscent of the Thatcherism he sought to move beyond. Likewise Huckabee, who is not an economic conservative or limited government advocate at heart, will likely be forced to take on the mantle of austerity when he runs in 2012. Even if the economy improves temporarily in 2011, there are enough potential economic crises on the way to keep economic issues at the heart of our political debate. What, for example, happens when twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings with literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans start defaulting enne mass? Or, what if candidate Huckabee is faced with a massive foreign policy crisis?

Mike Huckabee can, potentially, learn from David Cameron’s successes and failures. The Tories, after all, did manage to throw out labor, all be it somewhat underwhelmingly, and they did so with a high number of minority MPs newly elected. Cameron broke into long-time Labor and LibDem strongholds in his win, but also failed in certain key ridings. For Mike Huckabee, the biggest lesson is: be prepared to transcend your base. For Cameron, this was the moderate reformist wing of the Tory party, while for Huckabee it is the conservative evangelical element within the Republican Party. But Huckabee, like Cameron before him, may be limited by his inability to demonstrate to fiscal conservatives and defense hawks that he is, fundamentally, one of them. Huckabee could also benefit from a little philosophizing. There’s an argument to be made that strong communities foster individual liberty, and if Huckabee wants to unite the party without substantially changing his politics, he needs to make it. Finally, the biggest lesson from Cameron’s travails is also the simplest, and as a Baptist minister, Huckabee should appreciate it. There is a famous passage in the Old Testament (in the book of judges I believe), which stated that the Men of Issachar “new the times”. For a presidential candidate, “knowing the times” is an essential ingredient for success. No candidate can prepare for all eventualities, but it is possible to have a smart, flexible and effective policy staff, which can provide rapid-yet-thoughtful responses to developing crises. For a candidate not generally associated with policy wonkishness like Huckabee (or Cameron), such a group is essential.

I don’t know whether Huckabee will be the nominee, and I’m not particularly sure I want him to be. While I am sympathetic to communitarian conservatism, I’m not sure a nation with an economy in crisis is in the mood to be receptive to it, and I am a bit concerned—regarding both Huckabee and Cameron—that their desire to use government to undue the previous mistakes of government may back-fire. But, on the off chance that Huckabee is our nominee, I think it’s important for him to learn from—and improve upon—the electoral fortunes of another big-society conservative across the pond. And, he’d better learn his lessons well, because whatever else you can say about Barack Obama, he’s at least a hundred times more effective a politician than Gordon Brown.