HUCKABEE LECTURES- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks to a sold-out crowd at the Reagan Library. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan attended last week's event. Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee spoke to a sold-out audience at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley on June 29. Former first lady Nancy Reagan was in attendance.

A bestselling author, television and radio host, marathon runner, musician and former pastor, Huckabee said that lack of name recognition, media attention and funding at the beginning of his presidential campaign made it an "uphill battle."

"By the time the campaign ended, people started to recognize me, but it was too late."

Huckabee, 53, expressed concern over President Barack Obama's policies.

"Under the current direction our government seems to be going, you would think the way to dig our way out of the economic hole is to invite more shovels and dig deeper," Huckabee said. "How are we going to fix our economic woes if we spend more money that we don't have and borrow more than we can ever pay back?"

Education isn't getting enough attention, Huckabee said. Although he believes education should be administered by states, there should be national discussion about how to improve it.

"Kids are dropping out not because they're dumb but because they're bored with the fixed curriculum. We're not understanding that every child is different. We're not trying to build the curriculum around the child but to build the child around the curriculum," Huckabee said.

Pay good teachers more for doing a good job and retain music and art programs, which have been cut due to budget constraints, he said.

"We think we're saving money without understanding that we've cut our own legs from under us because that creativity is necessary for our future."

The 50 percent dropout rate among minorities is troubling, Huckabee said.

"These are people who will not be taxpayers, they will be tax takers."

Concerning healthcare, Huckabee is worried that "the government will tell you when to see a doctor and for what."

"The last person I want making that decision for me is some faceless bureaucrat in some office thousands of miles away from where I live," he said.

Illness could be prevented through lifestyle change, he added. Overeating, smoking and not exercising dictate healthcare costs, said Huckabee, who lost 110 pounds and began running marathons after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2003.

"We wait until people are catastrophically ill. Our money is far better spent on educating people on prevention."

A total overhaul of the U.S. tax structure is necessary to reward rather than penalize taxpayers when appropriate, Huckabee said.

"Our tax code is 60,000 pages long. Nobody understands it or reads it."

Huckabee described a New Hampshire man who took on a second factory shift to help pay his daughter's college tuition but ended up paying so much more in taxes that he was barely earning more than when he worked one shift.

"If he quits both jobs, his daughter will qualify for all kinds of grants and aid. Does that make any sense?" Huckabee asked. "We used to call that theft. Now we call it government."

The U.S. should not back down from tyrants and reverse its foreign policy, he said. He pointed to former President Ronald Reagan's policies as an example.

"I'm grateful that Ronald Reagan didn't listen to those who suggested scaling back his convictions on the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. We shouldn't apologize for our strength rather than being grateful to God and to our men and women in the military."

The Iranian people don't hate the U.S., Huckabee said. Iranians lit candles in solidarity with the U.S. after 9/11. It's the government that's the problem, he added.

"Any government that does not believe the Holocaust existed is not a credible government," Huckabee said.

People on the left and right want the same things—jobs and good education and healthcare— but approach those issues differently, he said. The right believes in the power of the individual; the left feels that power exists in groups, he added.

"The government is not interested in empowering individuals to be independent but enslaving individuals to need government and become more dependent on it."

Huckabee said his father, a firefighter and mechanic who worked two jobs, taught his son that he had the power to do better for himself. Huckabee was the first in his family to graduate from high school.

"If I believed I needed a group to succeed I never would have left Hope, Ark., and gone to college."

He said he disagrees with those who believe that America's best days are over.

"We've been through a civil war, two world wars, a Great Depression and many internal conflicts and we've always been able to find our legs," Huckabee said.