Jon Huntsman to seek Republican nomination for White House race

Former US ambassador to China served under Obama and had praised the president in the leaked diplomatic cables There are only a few positive remarks about Barack Obama dotted about in the embassy cables sent by former American ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, and subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks. But they will be enough to cause problems for the latest Republican president candidate in the months ahead. Huntsman, from a podium in New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, announced on Tuesday that he would join the race to take on his old boss for the White House next year. Confirming his intention to seek the nomination, he criticised the president’s record and, in contrast with his time as ambassador when he projected American strength, portrayed the US as vulnerable. “For the first time in our history, we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident than the one we got. This, ladies and gentlemen, is totally unacceptable and totally un-American,” he said. Huntsman, 51, could be a formidable presidential candidate, given his experience in foreign affairs and as a former governor of Utah. But many Republicans cannot forgive the fact that he served in the Obama administration. The president approached Huntsman in 2009 and asked him to be the ambassador to Beijing, and Huntsman accepted, serving until this April. In that time, he worked alongside the Obama on issues ranging from climate change to human rights, and stood side by side with him when the president visited China. It is rare in US politics for someone who worked for one president to turn around and challenge him. Huntsman’s work in the Obama administration is almost certain to be raised by Republican rivals. It could also undercut his attacks on the president. In the leaked diplomatic cables from Beijing, Huntsman is careful to avoid hostages to fortune. Some ambassadors are more flamboyant and comment at length, but Huntsman is strictly professional, sticking to reports of what Chinese leaders, officials, academics and human rights activists have told him and his colleagues in the embassy. There is little editorialising in them. In spite of that, there are moments when he does speak positively about Obama. In August 2009, he said, according to one of the leaked cables: “President Obama had a good feel for the US-China relationship.” He said he was looking forward to Obama’s visit to China later that year. Huntsman’s care in keeping praise for Obama to a minimum suggests he was thinking even then about entering the Republican race. Given that, the question is why he agreed to Obama’s request to serve. Huntsman, a Mormon, spent two and a half years as a missionary in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin. Obama may have chosen him for his experience as a governor and Mandarin-speaker or may have asked him in an attempt to take him out of the Republican race. As well as having worked for Obama, another potential negative for Huntsman is that he was a strong believer in the importance of tackling climate change, an issue on which many Republicans, including some of his rivals have expressed scepticism. Huntsman has since reversed his position, dropping his support for a greenhouse gas cap. But in a meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People, Huntsman identified climate change as one of three key topics, saying the two countries would have “many opportunities to interact and work together on key global issues such as climate change and the environment, regional security and global finance”. Huntsman again stressed that climate change is a priority the following month in a meeting with the foreign minister Yang Jiechi. Huntsman, again tying himself to Obama, “expressed his and President Obama’s hope to keep the US-China relations moving in a positive direction” and noted US and Chinese interests “were aligned on many aspects of the key issues of global economic recovery, regional security and climate change”. Yang proposed that the US and China handle their differences “discreetly to avoid public perception that there was friction between the two countries”. In the cable at least, Huntsman did not respond. In other cables, particularly ahead of Obama’s state visit to China, Huntsman sets out his views on a host of issues, from Chinese concern about a major US military presence in Afghanistan, through to human rights. On the latter, the ambassador said the Chinese record makes it difficult for the US to keep a low profile on the issue. Jon Huntsman Republican presidential nomination 2012 Republicans US elections 2012 United States US politics Barack Obama WikiLeaks Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 21, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.