Imagine if Mike Huckabee waits two months after John McCain clinches the nomination to endorse him, and waits to release his delegates to McCain until the day before the convention. In addition, he runs around the convention promoting himself and his message rather than focusing on supporting McCain’s. It would be the type of display that would lead many of the GOP’s pundits to declare it would be the end of Huckabee’s career and that it would forever alienate the party from supporting a 2012 or 2016 run.

Yet, if Huckabee did this, he’d be following the lead of John McCain.

John McCain was a popular item for a good month or so in 2000. The highlight of his campaign was a 49-31% drubbing of Governor George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, but McCain’s momentum was short-lived. He lost South Carolina, and then won Michigan only thanks to a sabotage effort by a Democratic state representative to embarrass Bush endorser Governor John Engler (R-MI). He also picked up his home state of Arizona. From there, the wheels fell off for John McCain on Super Tuesday, which was March 7^th that year. McCain was the favorite of liberal New England Republicans and scooped up Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut, losing only Maine to Bush. Bush, however, swept primaries from coast to coast, winning by decisive margins in California, New York, Ohio, Missouri, Maryland, and Georgia, along with Maine. He carried every state with a majority of the vote.

Up ahead was Southern Tuesday, where a slate of Southern winner-take-all states loomed large and would clinch Bush’s nomination by a pure number of pledged. McCain suspended his campaign (but didn’t drop out) and Bush rolled through Southern States. He won 70+% of the vote in all 6 states voting on March 14^th, and 80+% in Louisiana and Texas. It was clear Bush had united most of the GOP, but there was no McCain endorsement.

March 21^st: Bush won 67% of the Vote in Illinois. There was no McCain endorsement.

April 4^th: Bush won 73% of the vote in Pennsylvania, and 69% of the Vote in Wisconsin. There was no McCain endorsement.

May 2^nd: Bush won 81% in Indiana, 79% in North Carolina, and 73% in DC. There was no McCain endorsement.

May 9^th: McCain finally endorsed Bush ahead of two more near 80% win by Bush in the GOP primaries. The headlines from the London Guardian described McCain’s endorsement as “reluctant” and McCain reiterated he’d fight for his own agenda. During the intervening two months, word spread of a possible third party bid by McCain and media organizations even did polls on a possible Bush v. Gore v. McCain match up.

Of course, this was not the end of McCain. McCain didn’t release his delegates to vote for Bush until the afternoon before the convention, after he’d secured a prime time speaking spot, and another media story for releasing his delegates.

USA Today’s headline in discussing McCain’s election behavior said, “McCain Releases Delegates, Not Spotlight” and detailed how McCain’s schedule seemed more like that of the nominee than the runner up: “McCain's tentative schedule includes one news conference, three speeches, dozens of media interviews and a bus trip. With an eye on a second presidential race, the Arizona senator will promote himself and his reform agenda at the July 31-Aug. 3 convention in Philadelphia.”

Indeed, a man who had been so thoroughly drubbed in the GOP primaries was acting like the winner and taking every piece of media attention he could get, doing his best to distract from the party’s nominee and the Bush agenda.

Fast forward eight years and McCain is the frontrunner. However, unlike Bush, he has not been burning up with popular support. Despite media and party boss declaration that it was over, McCain lost Louisiana and Kansas (the latter by more than 20% of the vote.) In Virginia, he was held to 50% of the vote and Mike Huckabee managed to take two Congressional Districts in Wisconsin. On Super Tuesday, he won only three states by a Majority Vote (Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York) and won Missouri by a whopping margin: 33% of the vote to Huckabee’s 32%. Perhaps, most embarrassingly, McCain failed to win a majority of the vote from those who knew him best: 53% of Arizonans cast votes for other candidates, even while Mitt Romney won 51% of Bay State voters, and Mike Huckabee won 61% in Arkansas.

Unlike Bush, who was one week away from winning the required number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination in his own right after Super Tuesday in 2000, McCain came out of Super Tuesday this year with it apparent it would take at least a month to clinch the race. Almost immediately a hue in cry went up from the McCain campaign for Mike Huckabee to withdraw from the campaign.

When McCain was the second place finisher, he could take his time at endorsing Bush, even as Democrats were united around their eventual nominee, Al Gore. With McCain as the frontrunner, it’s expected the entire party will immediately rally around McCain even as Democrats seemed to be in for a long slog to the convention in Denver, and McCain has vast amounts of the Republican base that are thoroughly displeased with him. Based on the comparison, the best you can say of John McCain is that he’s consistent in his drive to fight for himself.

I know remembering history isn’t popular. Even on conservative blogs, there are those who decry Republican “impeaching Clinton over sex” for crying out loud. However, the lesson of 2000 is there. First of all, the cry of McCain’s staff for Huckabee to get out of the race is both hypocritical and presumptuous. Hypocritical because McCain didn’t drop out until one week before Bush had gotten the number of pledged delegates required to clinch the nomination and didn’t endorse him for nearly two months after that and presumptuous because McCain hasn’t clinched 1191 committed delegates to the National Convention.

Secondly, many factors led to the 2000 campaign being the tightest Presidential election since 1876 and none of them involved John McCain failing to endorse Bush until May. Those who are annoyed, upset, angry, and throwing a fit about Huckabee’s continued presence in the race need to chill out.

Finally, those who prognosticate that Huckabee not endorsing McCain in February, 2008 will mortally wound a future effort in 2012 are ignorant of history. If they think anyone other than political history buffs will remember the current flap in four years, they have another think coming.

If McCain clinches on March 4^th, Huckabee will endorse him a lot quicker than two months after the fact and can be expected to be far more cooperative in the fall campaign than was McCain.

If McCain loses in 2008, when the GOP begins its primary process in 2012, the first question we’ll ask will not be, “Who got on board with the losing campaign first?” Rather we’ll be concerned with how we avoid another defeat like it. How Huckabee conducts himself over the next three years will be more determinant of his future chances than the late winter rumblings of party apparatchiks and pundits.