ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Insisting that Americans deserve better, President Barack Obama chided Republicans Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Monday for a series of campaign-trail attacks that he said would be “ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.”

In some of his first commentary on the budding race to replace him, Obama accused the candidates of violating a time-honored American tradition of not playing “fast and loose” on topics of grave concern like foreign policy. And he said that regardless of which party wins the White House, he wants to ensure he’s turning over the keys to someone capable of seriousness and honesty.

“We have robust debates, we look at the facts,” Obama said during a news conference in Ethiopia. “We just don’t fling out ad hominem attacks like that because it doesn’t help inform the American people.”

Obama has largely avoided wading into the increasingly turbulent debate over who should be the next president. But during a news conference with Ethiopia’s prime minister, Obama was asked about criticism from Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, and seemed eager to add his take.

A day earlier, Huckabee said Obama was so naive about Iran that he agreed to a nuclear deal that would “take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven,” a reference to crematoria in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Obama suggested the tough rhetoric was a ploy by Huckabee to “get attention” or to push Trump out of the headlines.

“It’s not the kind of leadership that’s needed for America right now,” he said.

Huckabee quickly dismissed the presidential critique, arguing that what was “ridiculous and sad” was that Obama wasn’t taking Iran’s threats to destroy Israel seriously.

“I will stand with our ally Israel to prevent the terrorists in Tehran from achieving their own stated goal of another Holocaust,” Huckabee said in a statement his campaign emailed to reporters.