Wolfeboro, N.H. — Jon Huntsman may not have officially declared a presidential run, but he’s already a happy campaigner.

Talking at Jo Green’s Garden Café, a restaurant overlooking Wolfeboro Bay, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China gives the upbeat stump speech he’s been using up and down the state, emphasizing economic issues and political civility. He tells the group of voters gathered here that he’d like to come back.

“I hope that we have an opportunity to come back and shake your hand,” he says. “I understand that in this state you have to do it more than once, more than twice, more than five times even.”

Dressed casually in brown corduroy pants and a loose jean jacket, Huntsman easily mingles with the small crowd after his remarks.

Some are impressed by his speech. “I thought he was great. I hope he runs,” says John Day, a retired State Department employee.

“I enjoyed his speech immensely. I thought he put his finger on the pulse of the national mood,” says Steve Schmidt, a New Hampshire state representative, calling the speech’s optimism “almost Reaganesque.”

By campaigning just blocks away from presumed GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney’s vacation home, Huntsman is delivering a message: There’s another Republican heavyweight in town.

Wolfeboro was just one stop on Huntsman’s five-day New Hampshire sweep, a tour meant to introduce him to the state’s Republican voters and, thanks to the mob of media personnel present, to those of the rest of America as well.

He needs the attention. Right now, Atlanta business mogul and presidential candidate Herman Cain has higher name recognition (29 percent) among Republicans than does Huntsman (25 percent), according to Gallup.

The low name recognition benefits Huntsman in one way: It gives him the opportunity to brand himself on his own terms. Take his just-ended 20-month tenure as ambassador to China. For many on the right, it’s worrisome that Huntsman served President Obama in such an important position.

Mike Dennehy, a New Hampshire GOP strategist who worked for the McCain campaign in both 2000 and 2008, notes that if Huntsman wants to win New Hampshire, he has to clarify “where he stands with respect to the Obama administration’s policies because let’s face it, he served in the administration.”

“What New Hampshire Republicans are talking about right now is his relationship with Obama,” Dennehy says. “So once that is put to rest, I think he can then move on and start building a campaign.”

It’s an argument Huntsman has already begun to try to defuse. Delivering the commencement address at the University of South Carolina earlier this month, he told the graduates, “Work to keep America great. Serve her, if asked. I was — by a president of a different political party.”

In his stump speech, delivered at many New Hampshire stops, Huntsman uses his China experience (“the view from 10,000 miles away”) as a segue into comments about the American mood over the economy. Talking about how the Chinese are experiencing “euphoria” and “giddiness” over their economic growth, he notes that the attitude in the U.S. is much more somber: “We’re in a funk.”

But he also points out that there is much in our nation that the Chinese would love to have. Talking about his meetings with Chinese dissidents, he remarks, “They get inspired every time they see the American flag out front of the American embassy . . . because we stand for something that still impacts and influences people overseas.”

Huntsman says it’s the same with the business community, students, and artists in China. “It’s okay to be down,” he says. “But let’s remember that we’re still the country, whether you see it or not, that inspires the rest of the world. Which leads me to believe that we can pull our act together enough in this country to launch anything we want, so long as we’re together.”

On the economy, Huntsman carefully straddles the line between serious talk about the debt and a buoyant view of how “you got to grow your way out of it, too,” talking about reigniting the economy. He warns about the prospect of a “lost decade” if an “industrial revolution” isn’t launched.

Another theme Huntsman stresses is civility. “If we Americans remain civil to each other, we can deal with our problems, including the debt crisis that hangs over all of us,” he said Saturday in his commencement address at Southern New Hampshire University, the most high-profile event in his Granite State tour.

“After the shooting in Tucson, when Representative Giffords was injured, we talked seriously as a nation about civility,” Huntsman continued. “Many Republicans and Democrats even sat together at the State of the Union. . . . Now, if we can just sit together and solve our problems.”

“He has a very even persona,” observes Travis Blais, Windham GOP chair. “If I were him, my worry would be that since 2009, GOP grassroots has tended to favor confrontation over negotiation with the Obama administration.”

“In addition to showing his obvious competence, he has to show the toughness to want to beat Barack Obama,” Blais adds.

At Jo Green’s, Wolfeboro resident John Adams comments that Huntsman’s attention to civility is “a nice thing to try to do.” “But in this race coming up,” Adams warns, “I don’t think it’s going to be too civil, so he’s got to be ready to fight back when necessary.”

Huntsman is relentlessly cheerful. At Riley’s Gun Shop in Hooksett, a small town about ten miles north of Manchester, where a sign reading “Fire Pelosi” is hung next to the door, Huntsman looks at various rifles. He talks to the employees, joking that they should be able to remember his name, thanks to its similarity to the word hunting. When a reporter asks what he hunts, Huntsman cracks that he hunts “large varmints,” a quip aimed at Romney, who was ridiculed in the last election cycle for his remark that he shot “small varmints.”

The next stop that day is another Hooksett small business, Robie’s Country Store. Huntsman briefly talks to the cooks in the back, and sympathetically listens as the owner talks to him about how she is facing foreclosure. He picks out candy with his family. A little while later, as I talk to his wife, Mary Kaye, Huntsman passes us, a pile of candy in his hands topped by a Reese’s. “I’m getting a sugar high,” he observes.

Maybe that’s why the Huntsman team impulsively adds another stop to the already packed itinerary: a Harley-Davidson dealership in nearby Manchester. Huntsman, an avid rider, eagerly talks about the details: best models, years, and even braking systems. He somewhat wistfully tells his staff, “If you leave it to me, I’ll get on a bike and ride.”

The next event that day is a gathering of Republicans at the Nesmith Library in Windham. After Huntsman gives his stump speech, he opens up the floor to questions.

First question: Would Huntsman audit the Federal Reserve if he was elected?

Huntsman says he’ll think about it, but doesn’t know. He asks the questioner what he thinks would be found if the Fed was audited.

Huntsman takes several more questions, while hands keep rising. (“Politics is our sports here,” remarks Margaret Crisler, Windham GOP program chair and organizer of the event.) Participants ask Huntsman for his views on various topics, including education, energy, and tax reform. The former governor, who returned to the U.S. earlier this month, appears to still be formulating some of the nitty-gritty details of his policy positions. “All the blanks are going to be filled in during the course of whatever campaign there is,” he says at a different event.

On immigration, Huntsman reluctantly supports securing the border via fences and the necessary technology.

“I hate the thought of a fence on the border,” he said. “For me, as an American, the thought of a fence to some extent repulses me because it’s not consistent with . . . the image we’ve projected from the very beginning to the rest of the world. But the situation today is such that I don’t think we have a choice.”

He also sees securing the border as the step necessary “before we begin the conversation about processing 11 or 12 million undocumented workers.”

Asked if he supports the “core conservative values” of “smaller government, lower taxes, individual responsibility,” Huntsman pointed to his record.

“My mantra was and is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Huntsman responded. “I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that. Constitutional government, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All I would ask is look at what I’ve done. I’m not going to run and try to hide from what I’ve done. Some things you might like. Some things you might not like. But I think you’ll find on the tax side, you’ll like what you see. On the governance side you’ll like what you see,” he said, noting that Utah was named the best managed state by Pew Forum during his time as governor.

“Just take a look at what we’ve done and I think it’ll be completely consistent with the values you’re talking about that are tied to our Constitution,” Huntsman concluded.

It’s up for debate whether Huntsman wants to be perceived as a conservative. He’s frequently labeled a moderate, thanks to his stances on issues like climate change and gay rights, but his advisers have begun to push back against that perception. “Huntsman’s aides reject the suggestion that he is a moderate — one called it the ‘M-word’ — and describe the former Utah governor as a mainstream conservative,” reported the Washington Post last week.

Patrick Humphries, a Massachusetts Tea Partier who had come up to see Huntsman, seemed bemused by Huntsman’s reply. “I didn’t get a feeling from him that he was a small-government person,” he says. But he has other praise for Huntsman, describing his first impression as being that of “a man of deeply held beliefs” and “a solid family man.”

The Huntsman clan, which includes two adopted daughters and five biological children, is represented on the trip by Mary Kaye and two of their daughters, 23-year-old Liddy and 12–year-old Gracie Mei. While 2011 has been a year dominated by prospective candidates’ families horrified by the prospect of a run — see Cheri Daniels, Marsha Barbour, and Kimberly Thune — the Huntsmans seem comfortable with the prospect of a presidential campaign and the attention it brings. Both daughters and Mary Kaye seem unruffled by the media circus and crowding that occurs in some of the smaller event locations, and unfazed by the constantly snapping cameras.

The Huntsmans met in high school in Salt Lake City. “I ran for class office to try to win her [Mary Kaye] over. I lost. I found that she had run, too. She lost. So we came together and consoled each other as losers,” Huntsman joked.

Gracie also gets occasional shout-outs from her dad. “She was abandoned in a vegetable market,” Huntsman says of his adopted daughter from China (who was so liked by the Chinese during the Huntsmans’ recent tenure there that they made a postage stamp with Gracie’s face on it). “Gracie has a remarkable story. She is a reminder to me, and a reminder to Mary Kaye, and a reminder to all of our kids, about the importance and dignity of life wherever it exists.”

If Huntsman runs, he’ll need to win — or at least perform very well — in New Hampshire. His advisers have already suggested that Huntsman won’t even try to compete in Iowa, where it’s unlikely his mild-mannered tone and centrist-leaning positions would play well. Huntsman is busy hiring campaign veterans in South Carolina, which will be the third state to hold a contest during primary season, but there’s no recent precedent for a Republican candidate winning South Carolina without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire first.

Right now, there’s no swelling of enthusiasm for Huntsman in New Hampshire. A WMUR/CNN poll released Monday showed Huntsman with 4 percent support among the state’s GOP voters, trailing frontrunner Mitt Romney by a whopping 29 percentage points. At many of the events I attended, the combined forces of the media and Huntsman staffers equaled or outnumbered the New Hampshirites. Of course, it’s early, and Huntsman hasn’t even announced an exploratory committee, much less a candidacy.

On Sunday, between Jo Green’s and a house party, Huntsman visits a VFW hall in Laconia, N.H. Above the bar in the hall is a TV, on which an old Western movie is playing. In a corner of the hall is a pool table. A Huntsman staffer scouts out the scene and reports to Huntsman that one of the veterans would be amenable to playing a game of pool with him.

So, a couple of minutes later, the balls are arranged and Huntsman begins a game with Tom Michaud, a World War II veteran. As they play, New Hampshire voter Colleen Marquis enters the bar and loudly marvels, “Is that Gov. Huntsman playing pool?”

No, a cheerful Huntsman corrects her. That’s Gov. Huntsman “losing pool.” Sure enough, Michaud wins the game. Later, he tells me that Huntsman is a good player (and loser), and comments of Huntsman, “The governor’s on the ball.”

When their game ends, Huntsman talks to the people present. “You’ll know where we’re going to be for the next couple of weeks, making a couple more visits, arriving at a decision that our family is comfortable with, but I hope that through it all we come to the right decision, and that right decision allows us to come right back here for a rematch,” he says.

“And I hope that the rematch allows for a victory this go-around,” he jokes.

– Katrina Trinko is an NRO reporter.