Jon Huntsman: Moderate Republican in Immoderate Times
Mary Sanchez

Just once, before his run for the White House fizzles, I'd love to see Jon Huntsman turn to a fellow candidate at a debate and launch a curt, "I knew Ronald Reagan -- and you, sir...."

I won't hold my breath. Huntsman began his political career as a staffer in the Reagan White House. But his nonconfrontational demeanor is the most conspicuous trait that sets him apart from his party's other presidential candidates.

A diplomat in every sense, the two-time Utah governor has the distinction of actually having served the president he would like to defeat (as U.S. ambassador to China), which no doubt only adds another black mark against him for the conservative faithful.

Huntsman is of a species in fast decline -- the moderate Republican -- whose habitat has been laid waste by tea partiers, trampled under at any number of raucous town halls.

After the 2012 presidential election is over and the post-mortems are done, more thoughtful Republicans may rue the day their party turned its back on Huntsman's brand of diplomacy and obvious appeal to independents.

Huntsman's problems as a candidate in today's GOP are pretty obvious. Say his name and most will reply with brief recognition, but not much more: "Oh, yeah, the centrist guy. He seems pretty nice." In politics, as in life generally, nice guys don't finish last (of the current GOP contenders, Herman Cain will probably earn that distinction), but they rarely win the big prize.

Unfortunately for Huntsman, the sort of people who are driving the Republican Party these days aren't into nice. They're not even into civil. Or reflective or worldly or curious or skeptical or pragmatic -- all qualities desperately needed in our executive branch and qualities Huntsman seems to possess. So before he slips into oblivion, let's consider what kind of president Huntsman might have been.

First, he would have been uniquely suited to answer the rising challenge of America's greatest economic -- and possibly someday, military -- rival, China. He was an Asia expert for George H.W. Bush's Commerce Department and also served as the ambassador to Singapore. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and also knows a Taiwanese dialect and Cantonese.

Curious, don't you think? In this era of global competition, few modern presidents have mastered a foreign language. How unlike our nation's founders. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison knew multiple languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Latin and Hebrew. (Another president, Herbert Hoover, also spoke Mandarin.)

This alone sets Huntsman apart from the common run of politicians on the right, who are mulishly proud to be monolingual. It's an idiotic disposition that flows the ideology of American exceptionalism. Why should we try to understand the rest of the world, much less a rising power, when we are the Platonic ideal of civilization?

On macroeconomic issues, Huntsman is a tax-cutting, pro-business Republican; he repeats many of the same policy nostrums you hear from the other candidates. But he has no truck with the flat-earth variety of free market ideology beloved of the tea party; he shuns the typical culture war posturing and generally projects an image of the "pragmatic problem-solver" he says he is.

He's got the Clinton-cool vibe, as a passionate motorcyclist. The Huntsman family of nine looks like Barbie and Ken procreated and then adopted two adorable daughters from India and China just for an added touch of saintliness.

As far as his faith goes, Huntsman is Mormon, but of the "cafeteria" style (to use a coinage often applied to lax Catholics). His wife is Episcopalian. He supports gay civil unions, like most Americans these days but unlike any GOP candidate who hopes to have any sway with the party's fundamentalist base.

In other words, Huntsman would be exactly the kind of president who might restore broad appeal to the Republican Party and actually bring about real bipartisanship. In the event that Perry or Romney is elected president, it's a sure bet that Democrats will repay the GOP with interest for its combativeness over the previous four years. One might imagine Huntsman graciously sidestepping that unpleasantness.

However, barring some trainwreck among the frontrunners, we'll never know what might have been. We'll have to content ourselves to remember that, once upon a time, not all Republicans were ideological attack dogs.

And the nation might just have to wait until 2016 for civility and bipartisan cooperation to return to Washington.