Air Force One on eBay

Mike Huckabee’s decision not to run clarifies the career choice picture between Fox News and the White House.

“All the factors say go,” Huckabee explains (on Fox, of course), “but my heart says no.”

Perhaps his finances do as well. Unlike Romney and Trump, for example, the ex-minister is not a wealthy man who, in making the race, would have had to go off the Fox payroll, as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum did recently.

As Sarah Palin ponders a potential run, the choice between trying to go to work for taxpayers or staying with Rupert Murdoch becomes harder to make.

Murdoch pays better, of course, but being President has perks—-public housing, transportation and all that. If Palin goes for it, she could promise to put Air Force One on eBay, as she claimed to have done with the Alaska state plane.

Be that as it may, this is the first presidential race in history where potential contenders are asking themselves not only what they can do for their country but what Rupert Murdoch can continue doing for them.

Donald Trump, who welcomes Huckabee’s decision, has no Fox dilemma but would have to give up far more in ratings and income on NBC.

It was simpler in Lincoln's time when all you had to sacrifice was a log cabin.

Update: Huckabee says "It really came down for me to a very personal, a very intimate, and... spiritual decision...But I just somehow believed deep within me that it wasn't the right time, it wasn't meant to be."

Anything spiritual on Fox News should be welcomed by all.