'A magical communicator': he's no man for details--but Huck knows how to connect.(2008 II)(Mike Huckabee )

Windhan, N.H.

'IF I win New Hampshire, it's because I did this show," Mike Huckabee told David Letterman's audience during an appearance on the Late Show on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. "If I lose New Hampshire, it's because I did this show."

Huckabee, of course, didn't win New Hampshire. But he came in third--a respectable showing, especially for someone whose support in the state, at the beginning of September, was not measurable. But Huckabee's quick trip to New York for the Letterman show--at a time when all the other candidates were dashing around from Nashua to Salem to Exeter to Concord--was just one more sign that the former governor of Arkansas is running the most unconventional campaign in the Republican race.

Even now, with his recent successes, Huckabee doesn't have a campaign in the sense that frontrunners have campaigns. There's very little staff, a pretty small press operation, and not a lot of long-term planning. In place of all that, the Huckabee campaign has one thing: Mike Huckabee.

By now, most conservatives who follow politics know of economic conservatives' objections to Huckabee over his record on taxes and spending in Arkansas, and the objections of national-security conservatives to his not-fully-baked ideas on the War on Terror (as expressed in his now-famous Foreign Affairs article). But what people who haven't seen Huckabee in action don't realize is the degree to which his supporters simply don't care what the Club for Growth or the Center for Security Policy thinks: They like Mike.

On the Sunday before the New Hampshire primary, Huckabee travels to the Windham Center School to greet an overflow crowd. (It's an afternoon event; in the morning, Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher, speaks to a new church called The Crossing, but he doesn't tell the press about it.) Before Huckabee appears, I roam around the room, asking people why they're here. Most of the answers boil down to one thing: They think Huckabee is the real deal.

"Huckabee is a man who appears to be honest on the surface and honest on the inside," a man named David, from Tilton, N.H., tells me. David lists Huckabee's position on energy independence as the first thing he likes, and then abortion and gay marriage. But as he talks, he keeps coming back to character. "I think he is morally honest and would never do anything to embarrass the office of president of the United States," he says. A woman named Jennifer, from Laconia, N.H., picks up where David leaves off. "He's got his beliefs, he's got his morals, and he'll stick by them, and that's the most important thing about Mike Huckabee to me," she tells me. Awoman from Windham named Ruthanne adds, "It's hard to know someone just by watching a debate or the ads on TV, but I get a sense in here"--she brings her hand to her chest--"when I listen to people, if it's a script or if they are really saying what they believe, and I feel that when I listen to him."