Why Fred Thompson is electable

By Gary Reese
Florida Insider

(7/10/07) Fred Thompson’s weakness could be a strength, and that’s what makes him a Republican that could be elected president in a supposed Democratic year next year.
The former US senator from Tennessee sometimes looks as if he lacks the colossal political energy deemed necessary for a presidential race, say party insiders, including some we know who have attended recent Thompson campaign stops. He also sometimes sounds aimless in his stump remarks, they say.

But the reluctant warrior is often the storied one. Because Thompson doesn’t project fire-in-the-belly ambition and corporate polish, he could be the personality that sheds the perceived GOP armor of self-serving phoniness that so many voters say they’re weary of.

Most people will vote for president next year based on party affiliation and personality, and not on the incomprehensible details of particular policy proposals.

The eventual Republican nominee won’t be able to do anything about being a Republican. So personality becomes doubly important. That personality must embrace the core beliefs of the conservative party, while also somehow deflecting the million caveats that will be thrown at the GOP. Thompson is better suited than other top Republican candidates to do that because his vocal and visual mannerisms are oblique – he’s gritty and wry, and his experience as a TV actor provides him with a sense of verbal timing and dry delivery.

Oppose that to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who too often appears as a genetically engineered perfect Republican – a kind of Zig Ziglar of conservatism. Americans are world weary of the type.

Thompson has raised some eyebrows of doubt from observers who say his shrugging off of his Senate career is a sign that he lacks the taste for more major political combat. But Thompson apparently left the Senate because he was impatient with its bombastic protocols and glacial pace in passing laws.

Don't most Americans feel the same? And doesn't Thompson appear to convey that sense of weary impatience?

In TV debates so far, many of the Republican presidential candidates have tried to assume the mantle of Ronald Reagan by mentioning him and themselves in the same breath. They sound like preachers who talk Jesus but clearly want to walk on the water themselves.

They make the mistake of trying to slip on someone else’s personality like a pair of creased slacks. It’s like the football coach who follows Bear Bryant or Steve Spurrier: They make the fatal error of trying to model themselves on someone they can never match, when the better strategy would be to act the opposite of the coaching greats so as to avoid comparison.

Thompson is the anti-Reagan Reagan. Where the Gipper was embarrassingly upbeat, Thompson is deadpan and dry as husk. He’s somehow positive and cynical at the same time. He somehow gets away with what should be impossible in the electronic age: tossing around barnyard maxims like Abraham Lincoln. (“I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," Thompson was quoted by the AP as saying recently in response to revelations that he once lobbied for a pro-choice organization.)

His gruff delivery is a sort of bluff. He can say things other Republicans can’t say because he carries a sort of wink-wink gravitas that lets him get away with it. This allows him to stare at the world and dare it to universally condemn America. Or to lob brick bats at the female Hillary Clinton and come out clean because the insults sound half in jest.

He can also pull the entertainment-media card usually marked only for Democrats. Internet be damned – the media of our day is still television, and Thompson understands it. That’s as opposed to Hillary Clinton, who, for all her political experience and relentless drive, still sometimes seems to bring a meat cleaver to the tube when a stiletto is called for.

Newspaper media – whose headlines provide the cue for other media – haven’t yet figured out how to dissect Thompson for the purpose of devouring him. But they will. Right now, they are in the customary stage of propping him up to later knock him down. But Thompson may have the kind of undershirt aura off of which at least some of the hurled insults of the media mob may fall to the carpet.

This appeal to the gut and not to the gray matter may help Thompson with Republican voters as much as with Democratic and independent ones. This is critical for the GOP because it could get an electable candidate past the red-meat gatekeepers in the Republican primaries.

Media will skewer Thompson for his immoderately moderate voting record in the U.S. Senate in an attempt to alienate him from the Republican base. But Thompson’s personal bearing may ride to the rescue again. He seems to possess the low-key dramatic skills necessary to persuade the faithful that he can win. To that effect, media attacks have the potential to actually help the Republicans win the November 2008 general election – providing Thompson is the nominee.

Most of the above is intuitively understood by whatever voters are paying attention to the presidential race this early. More critically at this stage, it’s understood by at least some key Republican Party organizational movers and financial shakers, including in Florida.

The gravitating to Thompson’s campaign by Randy Enwright and the Enwright Group in Tallahassee indicates either confidence that Thompson is the answer to the question of what the hell the GOP is going to do next year; or that none of the other major candidates has a prayer.

It may amount to the same thing – “Thompson or Bust in 2008.”