What Really Matters

Q. There's a conservative critique of the Bush foreign policy that rejects the so-called neoconservative view that we should be actively spreading democracy in the world, that thinks our foreign policy has been too interventionist, that thinks there's a domestic price you pay for creating this big infrastructure policing the world. Where do you place yourself in that debate?

Answer from Republican candidate Mike Huckabee: I don't think the U.S. government is essentially a missionary organization designed to convert every nation on Earth to democracy. Hopefully, the best way to convert them is to create a wonderful version of it ourselves and create the appetite and hunger, and when countries and their people want it, then do what we can reasonably do to assist them but not do it for them. So I'm not one who believes democracy is an exportable product that we put forth, that we say, "Oh, here's a country over here that's being run in a way that we don't particularly care for. Let's go in and change those good people." I'm not sure that's our goal.