Mike Huckabee would later write about that day in 1996 as his "crucible moment."

Jim Guy Tucker, the Democratic governor of Arkansas and a newly convicted felon, was reneging on his earlier pledge to resign. His I'm-staying-after-all phone call came as Huckabee, a Republican and then lieutenant governor, was rehearsing the speech he planned for later that day, when he expected to become the state's chief executive.

What followed was a brief constitutional crisis in Little Rock. Huckabee teamed with Democrats to confront Tucker in a daylong showdown. It made him a momentary hero for taking a firm position — that it was time for Tucker to go — and won the new governor praise for his relative grace in awkward circumstances.

"Some of us want to be bitter," Huckabee would say after finally being sworn in. "I don't know what could be gained. What's done is done."

The next year, though, he would author a slender book trumpeting his character that day.

It would be the first of four books he'd write as governor, drawing on his religious faith and personal history to dispense advice. He published a fifth this year to kick off his presidential run.

So emerged the self-help politician.

"Leaders never ask others what they're unwilling to do themselves," he said in an interview.

A "FLEXIBLE POLITICIAN"

Never shy about his background as a Baptist minister, Huckabee regularly promoted conservative social issues even as he dueled regularly with the state's ethics commission about his habit of accepting lavish gifts. Strongly pro-gun, he boasted that he was the first governor to have a concealed carry permit. His wife, Janet, has one, too.

In Arkansas, he's almost universally described as a man of great energy and a public speaker the likes of which the state hasn't seen since Bill Clinton.

Self-transformed from flabby to trim marathon man, he doses his diet advice with the Gospel. In most everything, in fact, his Christianity lies not far beneath the surface.

Michael Dale Huckabee was born Aug. 24, 1955, in Hope, Ark., the son of a firefighter/mechanic and a teacher. His was a humble upbringing, but he thrived. He was largely self-taught on guitar and, despite the Baptist stereotypes, would play bass with various garage-rock bands.

Huckabee says he was a shy kid. But at 14, buoyed by the confidence he'd developed as a musician, he was picking up a few bucks as a radio DJ and learning to speak traveling around Arkansas as a wunderkind preacher.

By 1989, he was president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and in 1992 he ran for the U.S. Senate against Dale Bumpers. The race was all uphill. The preacher was taking on a popular Democrat in a Democratic state when turnout for Bill Clinton's presidential race was sure to doom Republicans.

Huckabee over-reached. He ran campaign ads comparing Bumpers to pornographers for his support of the National Endowment for the Arts. But voters knew Bumpers, a longtime Methodist Sunday school teacher, too well, and the tactic backfired. Bumpers won easily.

Clinton's departure to the White House set political dominoes tumbling through Arkansas, and Huckabee went straight to running for lieutenant governor. He won narrowly, was re-elected and by 1996 seemed headed to election to an open U.S. Senate seat.

Then came Tucker's conviction in the Whitewater scandal that dogged the Clintons.

Huckabee dumped his Senate campaign and moved into the governor's mansion. Through most of his decade in office he got along well with what was the most lopsidedly Democratic legislature in the country.

GIFTS OR GRAFT?

But ethics charges hounded him.

He fought the state's ethics commission over gifts that were showered on him.

In one year, he took in $110,000 worth of items, including $23,000 in clothing and other items from a state appointee. When the state changed its law to make reporting more specific, it turned out that the "fishing equipment" loaned to him was a bass boat worth more than $20,000.

When Huckabee was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2003, he went on a strict diet and shed more than 100 pounds.

Transformed from looking like a taller Ned Beatty to a folksier Henry Fonda, he wrote yet another skinny book about how others could learn from his experience.

The weight loss gives a narrative to Huckabee's campaign.

The storyline suggests a man willing to recognize the errors of his ways (bad eating habits), change (dropping 100-plus pounds) and exhibit the implied lessons of responsibility.

"When he makes up his mind to do something," said Charles Barg, his physician in Little Rock, "he's going to get it done."

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