Book Review: Rare Medium or Done Well

Title: Rare Medium or Done Well

Author: Mike Huckabee

Date: 2018

Publisher: Worthy

ISBN: 978-1-68397-302-7

Length: 204 pages plus advertising material

Quote: “It seemed logical that if I pledged my love to God, then I would be able to escape flat tires, sick kids, surly store clerks, bad hair days, and severe indigestion after a large plate of enchiladas.”

In the year 2000, then Governor Huckabee wrote a book called Living Beyond Your Lifetime. The book was an odd hybrid: Though its sales were boosted by the Governor’s presidential ambitions and it seemed to have been written with an eye to its campaign potential, the book was written for Sunday School groups to discuss questions like “What’s the difference between owning things and being owned by things?” and “Why did Jesus exhort us to love our enemies?” Its theme, expressed in its title, was that Christians ought to consider what is most important to us and what we want to be remembered for doing.

With some changes and updates, as Living Beyond Your Lifetime had been associated with a past election and allowed to go out of print, Huckabee reworked it into Rare Medium or Done Well. In this book he’s still inviting Christians to consider how they want their lives to be rated by their survivors. (Somewhat oddly, though it was the theme of much Christian writing and preaching prior to 1950, this theme was dropped by “modern” preachers and become so outdated it seems almost new again.) Only in this revised edition, however, does Huckabee recount how “in March 2017…I announced…that there was a greater likelihood I would have transgender surgery than run for political office again.”

If you’re a Democrat, is that good news worth the price of the book? Meh. As a Christian who’s registered Independent, I feel that this bland, nondenominational book, enlivened with a few very clean and wholesome witticisms, is exactly the sort of thing “conservative Republicans” should be expected to write. Unfortunately, as Republican number-crunchers have documented, that party is now dominated by the type of people who aren’t very “religious,” feel “judged” by comments on the harm done by divorce rather than admiring Huckabee’s efforts to lower the incidence of divorce in Arkansas, and were probably more afraid of a President Huckabee than they were of a President Obama…even in 2012, when Obama had given up trying to be fiscally conservative or encourage people to break out of the welfare trap. Though Huckabee’s campaign speeches represented the Republicans I know far better than Chris Christie’s or Carly Fiorina’s did, the national party never seemed to take his campaign seriously: you may remember that he was never part of the debate series among the “top ten” Republican candidates.

Let’s put it this way. Against either Trump or Clinton, I could easily have voted for Huckabee. Carson’s Christian writings are closer to my understanding of the Faith, and his political writings seemed more relevant to my time and generation, than Huckabee’s. But I never hated Obama so thoroughly as to have turned against the whole idea of the President being a gentleman. If we can’t get a President who can be a lady I still think the President ought to be a gentleman.

And Rare Medium or Done Well is a thoroughly gentlemanly book, with sections on traditional, gentlemanly virtues like courtesy, generosity, fortitude, and loyalty, and quotes from times when courtesy was considered especially compatible with military prowess. Huckabee even cites a legend about Alexander the Great giving gold coins to a beggar who expected copper: copper might fit a commoner’s needs (and gold might have created problems for a poor person, too) but only gold fitted Alexander’s image. So traditional…though old-school scholars probably knew that multiple versions of the story exist, some crediting Alexander with unprecedented generosity to a retiring officer in his army. Huckabee may be channelling your grandfather but you loved your grandfather, didn’t you?

If you’re looking for old-school Christian discourse at its best, any book by Mike Huckabee is likely to be a good choice.