January 16, 2012

Jon Hunstman, It Turns Out, Just Isn’t That Good a Politician

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Since I’m feeling lazy this morning, I’m going to outsource my Jon Huntsman commentary to a reader. As it happens, he says exactly what I was thinking anyway about Huntsman’s exit from the race:

This was a bit of a headscratcher. Same day he gets out, he endorses Romney. He has had some of the most effective anti-Romney ads out there, and because his focus was on NH he was all anti-Romney all the time. The extremely quick pivot to endorsement strikes me as (a) exceptionally crude and cynical resort to standard also-ran politician practices; or (b) a deal was cut (appointment?), which would only amplify (a).

Seriously, if I was going to run in 2016 I would try to avoid leaving something on the record like this that says everything I said up until 15 minutes ago was BS. Striking lack of any effort at authenticity. Unless he has written off 2016 entirely, then who cares. Huntsman just seems really bad at the public image thing.

I believed from Day 1 that Huntsman was running for 2016, which gave him way more scope to run a relatively honest and dignified campaign than any of the folks who were genuinely running for this year’s nomination. And yet, Huntsman just never seemed to attract a following, not even the Tsongas/Anderson/McCain-ish kind of cult that presidential elections so often produce. These are the folks who rally around the guy willing to “speak hard truths” and avoid “politics as usual.” The media usually swoons for them too. But not Huntsman. He got a few followers, and a bit of decent press, but that was it. He just wasn’t any good at projecting an intriguing image.

And the quick pivot to Romney just amplifies that shortcoming. Politically, maybe he thought it made him into the kind of team player who was more likely to attract establishment support in 2016. Maybe he thought there wasn’t much time left to make an endorsement that wasn’t just pro forma. But after the savaging he’s given Romney, turning around so quickly sure does make him look like a guy who was just throwing lots of anti-Romney crap against the wall whether he believed it or not.

Who knows? Maybe the story here is that Huntsman just isn’t that great a politician. After all, he is the guy who apparently thought that quoting a bit of Chinese in the last debate counted as a devastating riposte. But I guess he might make a decent Secretary of Commerce.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate