Zvika Kreiger^*^ has a fascinating piece on soon to be ex-Utah Governor John Huntsman Jr. over at “The New Republic”:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=bf9098d4-6b65-480f-b5dc-0ffb56844eb1. Speaking about Huntsman’s appointment as Ambassador to China by the Obama administration, Kreiger writes that:
bq. A virtual unknown only six months ago, Huntsman had burst onto the national radar based largely on his declaration of support for civil unions in February–a shocking position for the Republican governor of the reddest state in the country. He then started using his new platform to brashly criticize his own party. Politico, which in February dubbed him “the fastest-rising star you have never heard of,” by March described him as “an articulate, unapologetic, and unlikely spokesman for a new brand of Republicanism.” By May, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was describing Huntsman as “the one person in [the Republican Party] who might be a potential presidential candidate.”
bq. But it seems like Huntsman’s appeal was getting to be too much for the Obama team to stomach: This past weekend, Obama nominated Huntsman to be ambassador to China–essentially undermining any chance that the young, moderate Republican would challenge him in 2012 by sending him to another continent for the next few years. Almost everyone I spoke with in the State Department and Utah politics confirms that the decision was not driven by Huntsman’s China expertise or business experience. “We all thought it was going to be [former State Department counselor] Wendy Sherman,” says one source in the State Department. “Huntsman is incredibly fit for the job and will be well-received in China, but were there political motivations behind this? Everybody here thinks so.”
To the readers of the Monkey Cage, therefore, I would like to pose the question of just how unprecedented this move may or may not be. Can anyone come up with an example in US politics when a first-term president effectively removed a serious potential competitor in a forthcoming re-election campaign _from the other party_ by appointing him or her to a major position in the administration and/or an ambassadorial posting like the one Huntsman has received? What about outside of the United States – any interesting examples of similar moves?
Moreover, the article goes on to offer some interesting insight into the topic of my “last post”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/05/are_conservatives_more_clever.html here on the Monkey Cage regarding the direction of the Republican Party in the short to mid-range future. In explaining Huntsman’s decision to accept the ambassadorship and forgo a possible run for the presidency in 2012, Kreiger notes that:
bq. During our conversations last month in Utah, Huntsman had already begun to realize that perhaps the Republican Party was not ready for him. “You cannot have a successful party based upon a very narrow band, demographically,” he tells me. “You’ve gotta broaden it to include more young people, more people of color, more people who are urban-dwellers, more who are the intelligentsia in America, many who have jettisoned the party. … And that’s ultimately I think how it’s going to play out. We’re just not there yet.” Two years was probably not enough time for the party to change. “He realized he’d just be beating his head against the wall with these guys, which made him open to the phone call [from Obama],” says another source close to Huntsman. “If he thought he had a real chance to be the standard-bearer and savior of the party, obviously he would have said no.”
^*^I should note that Kreiger has been my contact editor for some of the pieces I’ve written for _The New Republic_, so take my assessment that the piece is fascinating with the appropriate caveats…