The Huckabee file: tough to check
Increasingly buffeted by attacks from the Mitt Romney camp (here's one of the latest), Mike Huckabee on Saturday responded in part by repeatedly urging reporters covering his Republican presidential campaign in Iowa to examine the details of his 10 years as governor of Arkansas.
One problem: His gubernatorial records are not publicly available.
Electronic records were destroyed by his aides as he left office (more about that here). And the paper records were donated to his college alma mater, which has not made them available.
The Times' Joe Mathews visited that school, Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., where officials denied him access to the records and referred him to an attorney for Huckabee. Efforts to reach the attorney were unsuccessful.
When Mathews, at a campaign stop Saturday in Indianola, Iowa, asked Huckabee about the lack of access, one of the candidate's media aides intervened. "We're done here," she said, and escorted her boss from the room.
-- Don Frederick
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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What a lying slimeball he is. He's a pastor in the worse sense of the word. He's one of those that talks the talk, and that's it. What a shell of a human being.
Posted by: Shag | December 29, 2007 at 04:32 PM
Some Pastor. Huckabee lied about having a theology degree. A theology degree is a Masters Degree in Religion. He has a BA in religion. Talk about phony, but no media coverage on that. Mark Halpern said, “Huckabee is unflappable, unfailingly genial, and willing to pleasantly deny the truth when it suits his purposes (such as claiming that he did not support the quarantine of AIDS patients in 1992).”
Posted by: Jack | December 29, 2007 at 11:57 PM
Big deal. Electronic files were destroyed but the paper records kept and donated to a school.. So what?
Do you think all the electronic files from the Clinton White House still exist?
What Huckabee did as governor can be easily accessed as all governor (votes, signings, policies) are a matter of public record.
Posted by: Mark | December 30, 2007 at 02:45 AM