Hunting Spin Down
The early CW (a.k.a., “the first thing that popped into Poltico’s collective head”) in DC is that Huntsman was “savvy” to endorse McCain in the primaries—his dad endorsed Romney, you know, so they had their bases covered. Bullshit. People endorsing McCain in late 2007 were hopeless optimists, not savvy. Those were the dark days of the campaign, with a broken-down bus and almost no media coverage. A small enough media retinue, in fact, that Gov. Huntsman and his wife and I once split a brace of donuts while waiting in the Manchester airport for a staffer to pick us up—I was the only other person there.
In the long view, perhaps a detail like that doesn’t matter, or tell us anything about what kind of ambassador he’ll be. But I think it says something about the kind of person he is. (Also he’s in favor of civil unions which is not ideal but, yowza, coming from a Mormon guv of Utah, I will count it as progress.)
