Huntsman Announces Run for President (original) (raw)

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Huntsman Announces Run for President

By Jim Rutenberg

June 21, 2011 11:09 am June 21, 2011 11:09 am

Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesJohn M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, announces his presidential candidacy at Liberty State Park.

JERSEY CITY – Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, officially announced he was running for president on Tuesday, telling an audience of supporters and reporters gathered at a park facing the Statue of Liberty that he would be a better leader than President Obama, for whom he served as the ambassador to China until recently.

“He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love,” Mr. Huntsman said of Mr. Obama. “But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better president, not who’s the better American.”

Under cloud cover that turned the Hudson River behind him a steely gray, Mr. Huntsman vowed to provide “leadership that knows we need more than hope,” and “leadership that doesn’t promise Washington has all the solutions to our problems.”

Speaking in a steady voice and with little noticeable emotion, Mr. Huntsman gave hints of a platform that would include “broad changes to the tax code,’’ a tackling of entitlement spending and a shift in foreign policy –- for now — away from overseas conflict, saying it is “not that we wish to disengage from the world, but rather, that we believe the best long-term national security strategy is rebuilding our core here at home.”

Mr. Huntsman promised a cordial campaign, saying “it concerns me that civility, humanity and respect are sometimes lost in our interactions as Americans,” adding, “I don’t think you need to run down somebody’s rep in order to run for the office of president.”

Professing respect for the president, Mr. Huntsman argued that the Obama administration had failed to fix the economy. “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.”

In response, the Obama campaign released a statement saying that in his speech, Mr. Huntsman called for “a more competitive and compassionate country, but he has embraced a budget plan that would slash our commitment to education, wipe out investments that will foster the jobs of the future and extend tax cuts for the richest Americans while shifting the burden onto seniors and middle-class families.”

“Like the other Republican candidates, instead of proposing a plan that will allow middle class families to reclaim their economic security, Governor Huntsman is proposing a return to the failed economic policies that led us into the recession,” the campaign said.

In speaking at Liberty State Park here, Mr. Huntsman was revisiting the spot where Ronald Reagan returned to the campaign trail after winning the nomination in 1980 as the great promise of the conservative movement after the Watergate scandal left the Republican Party out of power and out of favor.

Mr. Huntsman enters the field without such perceived conservative bona fides. Although he has a record in Utah of tax cuts and opposition to abortion, he also has taken some positions – including previous support for same-sex civil unions and a cap on emissions – that, along with his stint in the Obama administration, may prove unpopular with Republican primary voters.

Mr. Huntsman sought to turn that to his advantage, however, saying that his service in China – and other foreign postings during his career, including in Singapore for the elder George Bush — gave him a useful perspective on his home country. “The view of America from 10,000 miles away is a picture of liberty, opportunity and justice; people secure in their rights and in love with their freedom, people who’ve done more good for more people than any other nation on earth.”

Mr. Huntsman has referred to himself as a “margin of error” candidate, an acknowledgement that he remains among the least known of the Republican field. And the crowd here as he made his announcement was a reflection of that: the number of reporters covering the announcement seemed to be equal to if not more than the number of supporters. The speech itself, subdued and lacking the energy and enthusiasm common to campaign announcements, did little to draw out the crowd.

But his campaign lived up to its early reputation for expert stage management. Mr. Huntsman, slim with salt-and-pepper hair, stood on a riser draped by two American flags that fluttered gently in the breeze and with the Statue of Liberty at his back.

Mr. Huntsman, wearing a blue suit and power-blue tie, approached the podium by walking across a long field of grass with his family – his wife and six of his seven children – at his side as slow Western music played in the background.

Before he began speaking the campaign showed a video in keeping with several it has released showing a motorcyclist racing across the Utah desert plain. This time an announcer introduced the governor’s biography, to a backdrop of slow Western guitar music, saying he was “married forever,’’ “had five great kids, adopted two more,’’ and was the “ultimate conservative.”

The announcer seemed to make a subtle dig at the perceived Republican front-runner, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts – who once headed a private equity firm that specialized in leveraged buyouts — saying that at Mr. Huntsman’s family chemicals conglomerate, the Huntsman Corporation, he “built jobs, didn’t just buy them.”

Correction: June 21, 2011
An earlier version of this story said that Mr. Huntsman was joined by his wife and seven children.