COMMENTARY: Huckabee Speaks For Bad Guy

— Are we supposed to understand and accept that Mike Huckabee is in hell where he has official duties as a greeter, welcoming Osama bin Laden?

Let us resist the evil urge to say it all makes sense - that the Big Huckster would be in that location and that Lucifer would have tabbed him for special responsibilities on account of his gift of gab.

It would be wrong to say something like that.

So here is what happened: Super-elite American military personnel acting bravely and ably in our national defense shot Osama bin Laden in the side of the face and killed him, then dumped him in the sea.

President Obama credited himself a tad too generously in his announcement of this news to the nation. He spoke too freely of his favorite person, “I.”

Expert underlings gave him information and options on elaborate plans. He chose the most surgical, eschewing a bombing of the compound where, he was advised, there was a 50 percent to 80 percent chance of bin Laden’s presence.

Then he gave the go-ahead to a daring night raid that Navy SEALs performed admirably. That the president would have borne full blame had the raid failed - inside a sovereign and semi-hostile nation at that - is an insufficient excuse for taking too much credit.

Great leadership is the art of delegation, of praise for others and of personal understatement. It is self-deference, not self-reference.

Bragging should be received, not self-inflicted, and biographical, not autobiographical.

Alas, politicians swarmed like termites from the woodwork to get their names into news releases bywhich they could leverage some supposed association with this shooting death. Even the state Republican Party headquarters in Little Rock felt a need to make official comment.

At the risk of generalization, let us assume that politicians would not be politicians if they understood the beauty of personal discretion.

But no one - absolutely no one - could possibly compete in the grandstanding sweepstakes with the tacky Floridian, meaning the second-favorite son of Hope, Mike Huckabee.

“Welcome to hell,” Huckabee presumed to say to this dead body, revealing himself, again, as more a tabloid headline than a responsible communicator.

Huckabee opened his altogether superfluous public statement by saying it was most unusual to celebrate death. So then he proceeded to celebrate death, apparently licensed by his own pre-emptive acknowledgment of the questionable taste that he was about to display.

That’s a little like the first three paragraphs of this column - saying something tacky by the trick of asserting that it would be inappropriate to say the thing being said. Those paragraphs were written only for ironic effect, you see, to make the point of applyingHuckabee’s device to himself.

We all suspect strongly, of course, that bin Laden will spend eternity in hell, whatever his form and whatever hell’s. But we should not embrace a politician’s seeking electoral gain by dictating and announcing after-life dispositions.

Those we should defer to a higher power, whose divine authority no mortal man should dare usurp, even for TV ratings or votes, or both.

To conclude, here is what Obama should have said: “Our expert counter-terrorism and intelligence specialists found the murdering terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Our military leaders designed a bold and smart offensive to get him. Our brave and heroic troops performed this dramatic feat, infiltrating his coward’s compound and killing him.

“It is my role to announce this accomplishment to the American people and perhaps to seek to provide perspective.

“That perspective is that this stands as a testament to our strong national will and to our proud and unwavering relentlessness - to the very greatness of purpose and accomplishment that has been the essence of America throughout its glorious history.

“Nothing can bring back those lost to us on 9/11. But simple and profound justice can and should be served. And justice has been served here, simply and profoundly.”

And here is what I would have had bass guitar pickers and Saturday night talk show hosts on Fox News say:

Nothing.

JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU IN LITTLE ROCK.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 05/05/2011

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