Ex-China envoy Huntsman launches White House bid

JERSEY CITY—Former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman launched his 2012 White House bid Tuesday, calling for the United States to withdraw from overseas conflicts to rebuild “our core here at home.”

“It’s not that we wish to disengage from the world,” Huntsman said as he formally fired up his campaign, “but rather that we believe the best national security strategy is rebuilding our core here at home.”

With President Barack Obama set to announce the pace of a US troop drawdown from Afghanistan, Huntsman said war-weary Americans wanted a “fairly aggressive” reduction and that he worried more about US losing ground to economic rivals.

“I’m not sure the fate of our country is going to be determined on the prairies of Afghanistan,” the former Utah governor told reporters on his campaign plane at the tail end of his first full official day on the stump.

“It’s not going to be about battles on the prairies of Afghanistan, it’s going to be about whether we are up for the rigors of what will be a highly competitive and challenging 21st century.”

Emulating conservative icon Ronald Reagan, Huntsman launched his campaign in a New Jersey state park in sight of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline scarred by the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He then traveled to New Hampshire, home to the crucial first-in-the-nation primary, assuring crowds at both sites that he would revive the sputtering US economy to create jobs and reverse an “un-American” decline in national power.

Huntsman, 51, also assailed Obama over historically high unemployment and declared “we need more than hope” in a mocking reference to the “hope and change” mantra of the Democrat’s historic 2008 campaign.

But the candidate broke sharply with other Republican presidential hopefuls who deride Obama as a “European socialist” engineering improper government overreach into the economy and out of touch with essential American values.

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

Polls showed Huntsman trailing his rivals for the Republican nomination, notably former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a fellow Mormon and the frontrunner in the crowded field of candidates looking to deny Obama a new term.

But Democrats pounded Huntsman on Monday and Tuesday in a sign that they take seriously the potential threat he poses just two months after he ended a 20-month stint as Obama’s ambassador to Beijing.

Huntsman was well regarded in Beijing, known for his fluent Mandarin, his preference for his bicycle over chauffeur-driven armored limousines, and for adopting one of his seven children, Gracie Mei, in China.

He helped Washington navigate a particularly thorny time in relations between the world’s top two economies as they battled over everything from the yuan and trade to Taiwan and Internet freedom.

Among Republicans, however, he is not well known — and many who know his name consider his work for Obama to be an unpardonable betrayal.

Huntsman, the son of a chemical billionaire, has countered that he was serving his country in Beijing.

But he has also praised Obama’s economic stimulus package, backed civil unions for gay couples, and supported a “cap-and-trade” plan to curb greenhouse gases blamed for global warming — all targets of Republican scorn.

Huntsman, whose Mormon faith could prove an obstacle for conservative Christian voters, highlighted his well-regarded tenure as governor of Utah, citing high job growth, lower taxes, and rolled-back regulation.

He painted himself as the right candidate to “make hard decisions that are necessary to avert disaster” brought on by the swelling US national debt, which he warned could bring about “the end of the American century.”

But Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt hit back that Huntsman’s solutions would bring about “a return to the failed economic politics that led us into the recession.”

Voter Bob Hantman, 70, praised Huntsman during a rally in Exeter New Hampshire, saying “he’s got impressive credentials, he’s obviously a very bright, hard-working man — all the adjectives I would put in front of Obama.”

But still, Hantman told AFP, “I’m very undecided.”