TIME talked to former ambassador to China and Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman for a profile running in the May 23, 2011, issue of the magazine. Lightly edited excerpts from three separate interviews with Huntsman follow: Candidates always start out saying they’re going to run a positive campaign and bring people together, but in the end, they get convinced by their consultants that they have to go negative or lose. Why won’t that happen to you? Campaigns are an extension of the candidate and the candidate’s family. People who want to personalize and lead with negatives, I disassociate myself from them. Politics has become a business; these advisers in Washington force candidates into alleyways from which there’s no return. But the American public in today’s world is dramatically in need of serious debate, and I don’t think they feel there’s a lot of bandwidth left for personal attacks. Every time I hear someone say they sure wished government was run more like a business, I think really, more like the financial industry or the auto companies we had to bail out? Is that really such a great thing to wish on government, or has that argument lost some of its… The free market system is fragile; there is risk built in. Massive debt-equity ratios and the financial instruments made available by Wall Street got many businesses big and small into trouble, but we learn; Wall Street is learning from their own mistakes about what leverage can do. Everybody is learning how leverage can hurt you, and lots of forces are at work, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, trying to lead us back to financial health. Ultimately I hope we’ll balance the budget and deal with entitlements and the defense budget. And the states need to play stepped-up roles in health and education. Just now in the [commencement speech at the University of South Carolina] you told the kids that they’ll never be really happy until they find their deepest passion; what is your deepest passion? My deepest passion is public … Continue reading Q&A: Jon Huntsman