Some of us in this state had first heard him in the pulpit of Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, Ark.; others will never forget his inspiring words on the steps of Central High School in Little Rock on the redemptive 40th anniversary of The Crisis of '57, when the ghost of Orval Faubus was finally, definitively exorcised from that historic site.

Now surely Brother Huckabee would meet this test, too, I thought Tuesday night, for nothing tests a politician, or anyone, like defeat. Sad to report, I was disappointed. Yes, he did meet one test - he finally conceded - but without the elevation, the full quotient of grace many of us had come to expect from the man and preacher.

But this night he made the mistake of so many campaigners at the end of a campaign: He more or less repeated his stump speech instead of plowing new ground. Only in comparison to the other candidates Tuesday night was he eloquent. Which says a depressing lot about the current state of American rhetoric.

Mike Huckabee's concession proved a long, uneven mix of the sublime and strange as he went from citing Scripture and Col. Travis at the Alamo - you can't hardly beat those choices - to plugging a national sales tax, an exaction so unfair that naturally it's been renamed the Fair Tax in keeping with the deceptive times.

Ah, well, even Demosthenes must have had an off night, and surely the country will hear from Mike Huckabee many another time, especially in light of the surprisingly effective presidential campaign he finally wrapped up. Who beyond his immediate family and a few of his more loyal congregants would have guessed that the ol' boy and bass guitarist would have done as well as he did in a national race, reviving us again from coast to coast? The moral of this story: Never underestimate an Arkie. Especially one who clearly loves what he's doing.

It was fitting somehow that the last two candidates standing in the GOP column should have been a maverick senator and a Baptist minister. The warrior and the preacher. Achilles and Paul of Tarsus. As types, John McCain and Mike Huckabee represent the twin sources of their party's and country's - even their civilization's - strength: Athens and Jerusalem.