Mike Huckabee’s wrong-headed foreign prescriptions threaten to outstrip our ability to report them. Today, I learned that in 2002 Huckabee asked President Bush to lift the embargo against Cuba. Although there are colorable arguments on both sides of this issue (the better ones favor the embargo, but that’s for another post), it’s clear that Huckabee didn’t bother to weigh them.

We know this because Huckabee says so. According to CBS News, Huckabee acknowledges that in 2002 he was “really not that aware” of the issues that exist between Cuba and the United States because “being in Arkansas, that’s not one of the issues I am in close proximity with.” If that was the case, perhaps he shouldn’t have asked President Bush to reverse 40 years of U.S. policy towards Cuba.

Huckabee had a reason, though, for offering ill-informed foreign policy advice to the president -- he wanted Arkansas farmers to be able to sell rice to Cuba. While that desire is understandable given his then-status as Arkansas governor, one might hope that a man who touts his character as his main foreign policy credential would have informed himself about the national interest, not just the local money interest.

Where does Huckabee stand on the issue now? He’s switched positions and wants the embargo to remain in place. With the Florida primary looming and the Cuban-American vote up for grabs, Huckabee said in Miami that circumstances are different today because there are new markets for our rice in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. That explanation makes perfect sense: who had heard of these markets back in 2002?

Posted by Paul at 10:01 PM  |    |