A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Caucuses: Governor Huckabee and His Humor

Humor hides the man behind it. Twain was sardonic. Thurber was a misanthrope. And who the hell trusts the truthiness of Stephen Colbert? Which leads me to ponder, just who is the real Mike Huckabee?

This much we do know: he is a Southern Baptist preacher politician. It seems he has blended the two dichotomous roles, that of a preacher beholden only to God and that of a politician beholden to a vast and fickle electorate. As a preacher he plainly speaks an inerrant truth, yet as a politician he must obfuscate the truth in order to appease and accommodate. And it is through humor that the man who claims to not “separate my faith from my personal and professional lives” tries to blend these two roles. His preacher persona of country folksiness exudes a straightforward honesty, but hides the truth like a politician.

“Would Jesus support the death penalty?” Anderson Cooper pressed after Huckabee had successfully dodged Tyler Overman’s question in the CNN/You Tube Republican debate in Florida. “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,” the governor replied, deflecting the question yet a second time. In his television ads running in Iowa, Huckabee touts his Christian credentials with headlines like, "CHRISTIAN LEADER." Before a national audience, however, the politician employs his preacher folksiness to avoid offense.

“I can’t buy you — I don’t have the money,” he told Republicans at an Iowa Straw Poll one weekend in August. Then with the perfect timing of a stand-up comic added, “I can’t even rent you” (Nagourney). His aura of preacher friendliness, which he claims qualifies him more than the staid businessman Romney, wins the crowd. Yet lurking beneath his humor is true irony—his years as governor of Arkansas were clouded with numerous accusations of financial impropriety.

Which reminds me of another of his jokes written in his 2005 book, Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork. “When I was a kid in school, a teacher asked my class to have show-and-tell with the theme being ‘religion.’ Children were encouraged to bring a symbol of their faith and explain it to the class. The following day, a Catholic girl brought a crucifix, a little Jewish boy brought a menorah, and I brought a casserole in a covered dish” (5-6).

This joke, which Daniel Sacks records in his book Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture in 2000, appears ad infinitum on the Internet. What I find most curious is that Huckabee appropriates a joke, long a part of American religious joke-lore, as a “Personal Reflection.” How personal can a reflection be when there are countless versions of it? Indeed the little Fred, Tommy or Johnny of the joke changes Protestant religions with the alacrity with which I repent of gluttony and forsake chocolate. He is Baptist, Southern Baptist, Methodist, Nazarene, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Quaker, Presbyterian, and Unitarian Universalist. Even a Mormon version exists. (A religion, which the politician suggests by implication what the preacher believes, is not Christian.)

When, I wonder, did Michael become the child in the joke? And, more importantly, why? For, as any folklorist will tell you, the origin of this joke is less important than what it tells us about its teller. If we are kind, we must presume it is Mike Huckabee the preacher telling the joke. (Or perhaps his unimaginative ghostwriter.) In the fervor of his sermon against obesity, the governor assumes an evangelical role, like a preacher who rhetorically assumes the voice of Moses in the climax of his sermon. The joke is only a literary device he employs to personalize his crusade against obesity.

But if we are political, we wonder why Mike Huckabee would compromise his integrity for a joke. At the very least he is guilty of self-deception: it is difficult to reflect on a personal event that never happened. In a biblical sense, by plagiarizing a common joke, he is guilty of bearing false witness. In a political sense, he misspoke. And in a comic sense, he borrowed. But why? For the sake of a joke is my only conclusion.

17^th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes purports a commonly accepted theory of humor. He claims, “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others” (Gruner 13). In some sense Hobbes theory describes the undertone in Huckabee’s humor. His amiable humor belies a “holier than thou” mindset: his laughter arises from a “sudden glory” in recognizing his supremacy over others. Or as Howard Fineman observes, Huckabee “is a mix of humility and high-strung ambition. He is out to prove to the world that he is not a man to be underestimated just because he worked his way through an obscure Bible college in Arkansas.”

Undoubtedly Hobbes views humor much bleaker than I. Humor is delightful, essential. There is a reason a sense of humor always ranks high on the list of characteristics Americans seek in a mate. America reveres its stand-up comedians. Humor gets us, struggling couples and our country, through rough times. But we are mistaken if we do not look beneath the laughter to see what humor both reveals and hides. As Hans Christian Anderson observed, “he who takes the serious only seriously and the humorous only humorously has understood everything only very poorly” (Cracroft 17 ).

We know Rudy Guiliani is vitriolic, adulterous, and America’s Mayor. We know that Mitt Romney is mechanical, oscillatory, and Mormon. We know Mike Huckabee is funny. What we do not know is the man behind the humor.

Cracroft, Richard. "The Humor of Mormon Seriousness." Sunstone 10.1 (1985): 14-17.

Fineman, Howard. “The Huckabee Factor: Assessing the Preacher’s Post-debate Bounce.” Newsweek. 29 November 2007.

Gruner, Charles R. The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999.

Huckabee, Mike. Quit Digging Your Grave with Your Knife and Fork: A 12-Stop Program to End Bad Habits and Begin a Healthy Lifestyle. New York: Center Street. 2005.

Nagourney, Adam. “For a Joke-Telling Candidate, a Second-Place Finish.” 13 August 2007. The New York Times. 26 December 2007. "http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/us/politics/13huckabee.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1198159484-CaBe1+pjdvMr8ENz006GWA">