This Saturday First Lady Michelle Obama will make her Fox News debut when she sits down with former Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee to discuss her childhood obesity initiative and her newly launched Let’s Move campaign. According to US News & World Report Blog…
Huckabee, who famously lost over 100 pounds … agrees with the first lady that childhood obesity is a major threat to kids.
Huck says he “commends” Michelle Obama for taking on the problem and recognizing that it is not a “crisis of the month.”
“It is not a left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican issue. This is an issue that falls beyond what I call the ‘horizontal’ issues of left and right and rises to the ‘vertical’ level of up or down,” Huckabee says.
Obama this month announced her new program to curb childhood obesity: the Let’s Move Campaign.
Huckabee suggested that hosting Obama is a sign that the issue isn’t one that should attract partisanship. “The tragedy would be for conservatives to sit it out and not ensure that the approach is indeed vertical and focused on the cultural and generational changes that are needed.”
Still, he said, it’s not a problem “that government can fix and shouldn’t attempt to regulate people’s behavior, but rather to follow the same framework that has marked other significant cultural shifts in health behavior.”
Huckabee says pushing kids to watch what they eat can be a subtle thing. “Kids respond to peer pressure and influences that surround them,” he says. “There is no simple solution because the issue is far more complex than that. It involves parents, kids, the medical community, the food industry, communities, and education. The role for government is far more limited than many will realize, but government does have a role, not to regulate personal behavior and private business but to regulate itself and its institutions.”
Huckabee hosts Huckabee with Mike Huckabee weekends on Fox. It’s a newsy and folksy show where the former Arkansas governor talks about whatever he wants.
At least Huckabee agrees it’s not a bipartisan issue. However, he loses me when he says government doesn’t have a role in regulating private businesses. This bothers me especially when I think about private businesses that manufacture products that directly influence our health. If government plays no role in regulating private businesses then what is the purpose of the FDA? I guess it’s just a case of Huckabee not wanting to bite the hand that feeds him.
This interview will definitely be one to watch. Wonder if he’ll try to throw in some policy and Palin questions for good measure.
Posted by Aminah Hanan
