Huntsman couldn't resist the call of China
By Rebecca Walsh
The Salt Lake Tribune
If you looked closely, the signs were always there that Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. left his heart in China. From the Cultural Revolution propaganda jar that he kept on his desk to the head-scratching Confucian aphorisms and Mandarin homilies he sprinkled into nearly every speech he made, it was clear China was the governor's weakness. The one offer he couldn't refuse.
Whether it was canny political strategy or brilliant diplomatic thinking, President Obama knew just what he was doing when he asked Utah's governor to be the U.S. ambassador to China. "This ambassadorship is as important as any in the world," the president said. In one stroke, the Democratic president eliminated one of his possible 2012 competitors and picked a man many say is best qualified for the job in Beijing. The New York Times called it a "political coup.". And after being passed over eight years ago for the same job by a president from his own party, Huntsman stood in the diplomatic room of the White House Saturday, his shy and long-traveling wife, Mary Kaye, at his side...
If we're honest with ourselves, we saw it coming. I started to suspect Huntsman wasn't long for the West when I tagged along on his first trade mission to China three years ago. The Chinese had heard of him. They knew and admired him from his stints as ambassador to Singapore and deputy U.S. trade representative. They ate it up when he ate duck feet, gasped when he spoke fluently and at length in their complex language. "They respect him, which is most important with the Chinese," Utah World Trade Center President Lew Cramer, a Huntsman mentor, told me at the time.
Our last night in Shanghai, the governor took a couple of reporters, staffers and security guards on a tour of the city's old neighborhoods. As we wandered the narrow alleyways, ducking laundry and tubs of turtles, past dank, one-room dentist offices and tiny wooden huts with TVs blaring, Huntsman struck up conversations like a returning native son. We ate dumplings and spicy chicken in his favorite restaurant and, finally, posed like a row of tourists in front of the Bund's lights. After serving a Mormon mission in Taiwan, living in Singapore and adopting two of his seven children from the region, Huntsman will be returning home....
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12386688
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