At the beginning of this month, Public Policy Polling surveyed 481 Iowa Republicans to gauge their support of the presidential hopefuls. Of that number, 480 voted for either Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul or Tim Pawlenty. As for the 481st Iowan? He was the only one who signed up to support Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor who gave up his post as President Barack Obama's ambassador to China to run for president. Likewise, when Magellan Strategies polled New Hampshire voters last week, 3 percent -- or 21 people -- said they support Huntsman.
If Huntsman wants to eventually fight a general election battle against his former employer, he'll need more than a handful of voters to support him in Iowa and New Hampshire. He had a chance to get that today with a kickoff event to announce his campaign in Jersey City, New Jersey. Instead, he established himself as the least compelling candidate in the entire field with a bland speech that was heavy on platitudes and light on personality.
The event (or at least, the online webcast) began with Huntsman's campaign video, which shows him riding across the desert on his motorcycle as a voice-over introduces Huntsman as the Mandarin-speaking straight shooter who doesn't "flip and flop" like that other, Mormon candidate. Despite being campaign boilerplate, but it was more interesting than the speech that followed.
With the Statue of Liberty as his backdrop, Huntsman held forth: "This is a land of promise and opportunity," "We must reignite the powerful job creating engine of our economy," and "Our challenges are many, and they are urgent, but they are not insurmountable for a people of our caliber." And in an obvious bid for the Tom Brokaw vote, he even included an extended paean to the "Greatest Generation," for reasons that were a little unclear.
In the recent past, Huntsman has presented his moderation as an asset, but there were no mentions of his support for civil unions, his acceptance of climate change, or his service in the Obama administration. Aside from brief mentions of his Chinese language skills, his family, his governorship, and tax cutting, Huntsman's speech was devoid of both personality and ideology. Remove those, and any politician in America -- Democrat or Republican -- could have given this speech, with little additional alteration.
As a presidential hopeful, Huntsman's main problem is that he lacks a compelling rationale for his candidacy. He's not a conservative standard-bearer, like Bachmann. He's not a "least common denominator," like Pawlenty. And he's extremely similar to Romney, without Romney's money, organization or front-runner advantage. He isn't even aggressive, like Rick Santorum or Paul; in his speech, he pledged to "take the high road" and refrain from uncivil criticisms of Obama. If the current field (or Chris Christie's celebrity) is any indication, Republicans are willing to nominate a moderate, but they aren't going to nominate someone who goes easy on Obama.
If Huntsman were auditioning for the role of president in a summer blockbuster disaster movie, he'd be in good shape. He looks like a standard-issue leader; you could switch him with Bill Pullman in Independence Day and barely notice the difference. But he's running for the Republican nomination, and right now, there's no reason to cast him over any other candidate.
