Former Arkansas Governor (and former presidential candidate) Mike Huckabee (r) was the featured speaker at the opening night assembly in Hendricks Hall for the American Legion Boys State of Missouri which is taking place on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg this week.

Huckabee spoke for over forty minutes and took questions for nearly another twenty. The entire lower portion of the hall was filled with Boys State participants, with their overflow and public seating in the balcony (it had been announced earlier that 981 individuals had registered and that there were 125 staff members).

Mike Huckabee is an engaging speaker, liberally lacing his narrative with humorous and sometimes self deprecating anecdotes. He spoke without notes or a prepared text and walked around the stage throughout his speech (he wore a remote microphone).

Huckabee does speak quickly – there are a lot of words to transcribe in his forty minute speech. Given the time constraints facing our transcription gnomes at the Show Me Progress corporate headquarters, we will present the question and answer portion of the evening here first, with the speech coming at a later date as time permits (Don’t worry, we’ll get to it). The young men attending Boys State have a reputation for asking good questions in these sessions:

Mike Huckabee: …Thank you very very much. We have microphones, I understand, on either side. We have folks designated. And so if you’ve got a question, I’ll be happy to take  a few of ’em. Where’s the first one?

Microphone bearer: Guys, If you want to line up behind the other gentleman and myself if you have questions.

Mike Huckabee: Oh my. [laughter] By the way, in politics we call this Q and A and everybody thinks it stands for questions and answers. If you ever run for office it means questions and avoidance. [laughter] You try not to say something that kills your career, on You Tube, so [laughter] let’s see how this works out tonight.

Question: …I wanted to know what do you think we as a generation can do to fight the growing problems such as the genocide in Darfur?

Mike Huckabee: I think the most important thing we can do is, is first of all, get our own house in order. I mean I do think that that’s important. It’s hard for us to tell other people how to live when we don’t know how to live. We’re killing people on our own streets and, you know we don’t seem to be able to handle a lot of our own problems. But I also think that we can’t turn our, our, our backs on genocide. I’ll be in Rawanda next month, for example, with the One Campaign. And one of the things I think each of us have a personal responsibility to do is not only to live our own lives with a senses of a code of honor and decency and morality, but to use what resources we have, whether it’s giving our money, giving our time. I think humanitarian aid is very important. I think we have to be careful when we get involved militarily in situations where we haven’t been invited. One of the problems we have faced in the past is when we inject ourselves into a conflict where we are neither welcome nor wanted. But certainly there’s always a role for us to play, both individually and as a nation, in terms of seek, seeking to alleviate human suffering, by our own contributions. And frankly I think it’s also important that we can’t claim that we’re really burdened about Darfur if we’re not burdened about homeless and hungry people here in our own country. I’m not saying that we should exclude one for the other. That’s not it at all. But I know some people for example, in church, and they’re really interested in missions as long as the missions are half way around the world. They don’t even see that on the way to church today they drove past somebody who’s really really hurtin’. Really really hungry. It’s hard for me to believe that, that we can’t somehow be concerned about the person we see every day, but we’re really burdened about the people who we’re never going to meet. So it’s not a matter of either or. It’s a matter of both and putting that into motion. Thank you. [applause]

Question: …If you’re nominated for vice president, what do you want to do?

Mike Huckabee: If I’m nominated for vice president what do I want to do?

Question: Yes.

Mike Huckabee:  [garbled] ..that really neat house over there, on Naval Observatory. [laughter] You know I have no idea whether I, I’ll have any likelihood of doing it. I really don’t. And, you know, if, if Senator McCain were to ask me my main goal would be to do what I could to be of help to him getting elected. And as I’ve said to many people, and it’s really the truth, if, if there’s somebody else who can better help him to become president that’s who I want him to pick. Because it’s more important that he’s president than me or somebody else is vice president, quite frankly. I do think that this is an important election. I have great respect for Senator Obama. And I’ve probably troubled Republicans because I, yesterday I was speaking at the state Republican convention in Texas and in my point was, look, let’s not demonize Barack Obama. He does represent a significant moment in American history that all of us can be proud of regardless of our political affiliation. The fact that in our life time we’ve seen a time coming from when I was a kid when African American citizens would have to go to a different entrance at restaurants, theaters, and sit in different areas and drink from different water fountains, and not be allowed into the places where the rest of us could go. From seeing that in my life time, to where it actually came to schools and we shared schools and we had never done that before. To go from that to a person being nominated for the presidency, it’s a pretty big jump. And we all can be proud of that. I don’t care where our politics lie. Take [applause][crosstalk] …Our country has a long way to go in race relations, but we have come a long way as I can attest from growing up in the deep South. My point is, with all that due admiration I do not think that his answers for America are the right ones. And that’s why I’m supporting Senator McCain. But it doesn’t mean that I have to hate Barack Obama, demonize him, go out and see if I can make him look horrible. I need to just say, look, here’s what his change means, here’s why I think that that may not be the best thing for the country and so let’s go a different direction. So that’s, that’s what I hope will happen. Whoever Senator McCain picks who can best help him layout that message, that’s who I hope he picks…

The audience exits Hendricks Hall after the speech.