Huntsman, Asha and Gracie Mei

Among “all things Hunstman,” the candidate’s presidential launch also introduced his two youngest and adopted daughters (out of seven kids total) not just to the American people, but also to the lens of the campaign.

Here’s a snip from a several-week-old Hunstman quote the WSJ used yesterday accompanying this photo. It’s from a New Hampshire appearance in which Hunstman introduced three of his daughters, including Gracie Mei who was born in China:

“You want to cut through the politics and get to the bottom line of life, the greatest thing we have ever done is bring two kids into our lives who had no future,” he told a gathering of 40 or so people at a house party in Nashua. “And I don’t say that gratuitously, I say that with joy and enormous satisfaction.”

The girls “who had no future?”

I can certainly understand the comment and qualification about gratuitousness. But then, please tell me Huntsman, the presidential product, wasn’t simultaneously using these two children as a brand endorsement for open-mindedness, globalism and his international portfolio, at the same time inoculating himself against old fashioned Merikan racism by framing Asha in the foreground, adopted from India, and Gracie Mei with Lady Liberty, and count ’em, one, two, three, four American flags (including the one visible on Asha’s dress).

(photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters caption: Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman kisses his daughter Asha (C) as his other daughter Gracie Mei (L) looks on after announcing his candidacy for the Republican U.S. presidential 2012 campaign at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey June 21, 2011)