Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is tickled by the rampant speculation that he will seek the presidency. Officially, he's "keeping all options open," which is another way of saying he's trying to figure out how much money he could raise.

More important, but less noted, has been Huckabee's political transformation. In his early years as Lieutenant Governor and then in the top job, he offered little more than anti-Clinton resentment and capering populism; in 1996 he warned of "environmental wackos who ... want to tell us what kind of deodorant we can use." Huckabee is now a mature, consensus-building conservative who earns praise from fellow Evangelicals and, occasionally, liberal Democrats.

In 1997 he surprised some Republicans by introducing ARKids First, and a year later he decided that all the state's proceeds from the tobacco industry lawsuit settlement should go to health education, antismoking campaigns and—get this—Medicaid expansion. Partly because of opposition from his own party, Huckabee's tobacco plan got bottled up in the Arkansas house. So he put it before voters, and the referendum passed, 64% to 36%, in 2000. Huckabee also helped persuade voters to increase their own gas taxes to fund long-overdue highway repairs in 1999.