I’m probably going to catch a lot of criticism for saying this; but I’ve decided the best Vice Presidential choice for Barack Obama, just might be that of Governor Mike Huckabee.  Yes, I know he is a Republican and that he supports Senator John McCain for President.

Before you tell me that I must be nuts for even thinking of such an idea, let me explain my reasoning.

At the beginning of the Republican Party’s primary, after listening to Governor Huckabee during the debates and seeing him on talk shows, I wrote a blog and predicted that Huckabee would be the Democratic Party’s worse nightmare if he were to be chosen as their Presidential nominee.  I continue to believe he would have been just as charismatic and likable as Barack Obama is.  His message that he brought to the campaign trail could have been just as strong as Obama’s message of “change”.  I truly believe that.

Since Senator John McCain ended up winning his Party’s primary campaign (I’ll never understand why they allowed that to happen), I’ve often mentioned my fear that McCain would choose Mike Huckabee to be his Vice Presidential nominee; because if Huckabee is on that ticket, Barack Obama had best find a very ‘likable’ candidate that is also very good at debating the issues, for his VP nominee.

Huckabee is the author of several books, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, a public speaker and a musician; he plays bass guitar in his rock band, Capitol Offense.   He is well known for having lost 110 pounds in a very short time and for advocating a healthy lifestyle.   He and his wife, Janet, have been married 33 years and have three grown children: John Mark, David, and Sarah.

Besides running for the Republican’s Presidential nominee this year, Huckabee is now a political commentator of Fox News Channel.  He served as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007.

His father worked as a fireman and mechanic, and his mother worked as a clerk at a gas company.   For more information on his personal and professional life visit: Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Huckabee

Here are a few examples of why I think Barack Obama should consider Governor Huckabee as his Vice Presidential nominee:

In April 1994, Huckabee withdrew from a speaking engagement before the Council of Conservative Citizens. He commented, "I will not participate in any program that has racist overtones. I've spent a lifetime fighting racism and anti-Semitism.

Huckabee proclaimed 1997 as a year of racial reconciliation by saying "Let every one of us make it our priority to bring reconciliation, not so much that we can force it or legislate it, because we cannot, but that we begin in each of our own lives to purpose in our hearts that we will not harbor anger, hostility, prejudice, bigotry and racism toward any person.”  This tells me he’d work well with Obama on race issues.

Huckabee signed legislation to create a health insurance program which extended coverage to children of lower-income families, to be funded in part by Medicaid, SCHIP, and a tobacco industry lawsuit settlement. The program, ARKids, reduced the number of uninsured children to nine percent (compared with 12 percent for the nation) in 2003.  This tells me he’d work hard to get some sort of universal health care program.

Huckabee has come under criticism for his handling of the case of Wayne DuMond (also spelled Dumond), a convicted rapist who was released during Huckabee's governorship.  This reminds me of how Dukakis was treated during his Presidential run.

On 1999, Huckabee signed into law a three cent increase in tax on gasoline and a four cent increase on diesel. Attached to the bill was a bond issue to pay for highway construction.  This tells me he’s willing to raise taxes to pay for things necessary, like our highways.

Huckabee supported a 2005 bill by Arkansas State Representative Joyce Elliott to make some illegal immigrants eligible for scholarships and in-state college tuition, while vehemently opposing a bill sponsored by Arkansas State Senator Jim Holt which would deny state benefits to illegal immigrants, calling it "un-Christian”.  While I don’t agree with this idea, I know many Democrats do.

 Huckabee said the nation will need to address the concerns of the Hispanic community because of its growing influence and population base. "Pretty soon, Southern white guys like me may be in the minority,” He appears to accept the fact that there are other races, other than whites to be concerned for.

After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, an estimated 70,000 evacuees fled to Arkansas and Huckabee ordered state agencies to take care of them. State parks offered discounts, waived pet restrictions, and bumped other reservations in favor of evacuees. Pharmacists were given emergency authority to dispense prescriptions and provide access to dialysis machines. Shelters opened up in nearly every portion of the state, and Huckabee requested that the entire state be declared a disaster area. This tells me that he will not be another George W. Bush during a disaster.

 More recently, Mike Huckabee has admitted that Barack Obama has indeed run a successful campaign.  Just today he stated Barack Obama's candidacy "a landmark achievement" and he warned fellow Republicans not to demonize Obama.

"Republicans will make a fundamental if not fatal mistake if they seek to win the election by demonizing Barack Obama,"  Huckabee praised the country for getting "to a point where we did not see his color but we truly saw his charisma, his message and what he brought to the campaign trail."  "When people are really hurting — and they are right now — they're not looking at a person's race," he added.

When discussing Obama and Reverend Wright, Huckabee said that “Obama made the point, and I think it’s a valid one, that you can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can’t. Whether it’s me, whether it’s Obama…anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.  Now, the second story. It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say “Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.””

Are there things about Huckabee that I don’t agree with?  Yes, definitely!  I don’t agree with several of his political views, like on abortion and marriage and some of his health issues he wants to push.  I could name quite a few things I don’t like about him but I don’t have the time or space.

My point is, as a political candidate, Mike Huckabee would be a challenge for anyone to take on if he is given the time to speak.  During the Republican debates, the media seemed to ignore Mike and gave most their attention to McCain and Mitt Romney instead.

Keep in mind that there are those in our party that think Senator Hagel, who is also a republican, should be Obama’s VP nominee.  It was also said that Kerry asked McCain to be his VP.  Imagine the breaking news stories if Obama were to actually chose a Republican, one that is not totally aligned with their own Party on all issues?

Remember this story about Governor Mike Huckabee?   Huckabee faulted President Bush as not listening to military leaders who urged him early on to send more troops to secure Iraq, charged that the administration’s policy toward Pakistan had been a “waste” and a “setback,” and warned that the United States was now more “vulnerable to the animosity of other countries.”

“American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out,” wrote Mr. Huckabeee, a former Arkansas governor. “The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.”

Can’t you just hear Huckabee going about John McCain with these same kinds of words?