Recording Angels

This afternoon, after taking a good stiff dose of tenocyclidine and striking my forehead robotically with a ballpeen hammer for the better part of an hour, I read an article by Gail Russell Chaddock and became convinced that Mike Huckabee is the ideal person to lead our troubled nation:

Huckabee is shaping his come-from-behind campaign on the same principle that grew the Church at Rock Creek from a few dozen people in 1996 to more than 5,000 today: Every life has value – and don't count anyone out.

This, Ms. Chaddock points out, is a message that can't help but resonate with "values voters" (an eccentric but politically significant subculture whose vote - unlike yours or mine - is strongly influenced by things they believe about stuff).

There's a lot more to Huckabee than that, though. He's guided by moral absolutes, and he's a "conciliator" with "a great sense of humor." He grew up poor, and "set up a 24-hour broadcast ministry." He understands the problems average people face, and strives to criminalize abortion.

Better yet, in an age when American presidents are all too willing to let their resolve be shaken by empirical evidence of their own failings, we can count on Huckabee to measure his accomplishments against nothing but his own sense of self-satisfaction:

"He felt that God wanted him to run for the Senate. I, too, felt that that was what he was supposed to do," says his wife, Janet, in an interview. "We didn't have a Plan B" when he lost, she adds. "But you can't second guess something when you think you've done the right thing. You have to make the decision and have peace about it. That's where your faith comes in."

Faith is also the basis of Huckabee's preternatural empathy with the downtrodden:

Put in the terms of his faith: It's the Golden Rule in action.

This is what allows Huckabee to feel the sinner's soul-deep craving for punishment as if it were his own, and to fulfill it:

Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today refused to authorize a Medicaid payment for an abortion for a 15-year-old girl whose stepfather has been charged with incest, despite a Federal judge's order that such payments were required by Federal law.

It's a little odd that Ms. Chaddock chose not to mention this episode in the course of her otherwise uncompromising profile. Then again, maybe it's not really relevant. After all, we have it on excellent authority that Huckabee's a "conciliator."

Meanwhile, Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri is conducting an unbiased scientific probe into the insupportable horrors of the Abortion Holocaust:

The task force was conceived by John McCastle, president of Alliance for Life-Missouri, who recruited many of the group’s members. Among the questions McCastle poses: Does abortion lead to crime?

McCastle draws that question from unspecified studies, which he says suggest an overwhelming majority of women prisoners have had abortions.

But people in prison typically have numerous problems. Determining whether abortion is a cause, rather than an effect, could be challenging.

After Ms. Chaddock's rather one-sided profile of Huckabee, you can't help but be impressed by AP's presentation of both sides of the argument: Did these women have abortions because they had problems, or do they have problems because they had abortions? Teach the controversy!

In other news, only 37 percent of Fox News viewers describe themselves as pro-life.

(Illustration: "The Recording Angel" by Elihu Vedder, 1883.)