Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey - the first Republican lieutenant governor in Tennessee since 1867 - has joined the Draft Fred Thompson 2008 as a "founding member" of the committee, the organization founded by U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp announced today.
"I can think of no better American to become our President than Fred Thompson," said Ramsey. "He is a thoughtful, articulate conservative who has the skills required to bring our country together in difficult times."
Meanwhile, a recent Los Angeles Times article looked at the Thompson buzz...
The effort coalescing behind Thompson underscores the extent to which leading conservatives are dissatisfied with a GOP race in which former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a moderate on abortion and gay rights, has become the front-runner in polls.
The leading alternatives to Giuliani have not quelled the disenchantment — top conservatives remain wary of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney suffers from his one-time embrace of moderate views on some social issues.
Romney has disavowed those positions and stressed his commitment to conservative causes. He won a straw poll at a recent conference of conservative activists in Washington — but even after busing supporters to the event, he came out on top with just 21% of the vote.
"That's not what I would call a ringing endorsement," said David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organized the gathering. "People are looking at the field and saying consumers are not going to buy the product," Keene said. "At a certain point, you can put a new one on the market and clean up."
The LA Times article does a good job capturing conservative discontent and why it is fueling the Thompson surge, but it also hints at how the media will portray Thompson if he runs - as an actor, primarily, rather than a successful prosecutor and lawmaker.
Thompson, the LAT said, "positioning himself to answer the call and, perhaps, follow the script that saw Ronald Reagan jump from Hollywood to the White House."
Actually, Reagan didn't "jump from Hollywood to the White House." He was a successful and popular two-term governor of California in between his acting career and his presidency.
Likewise, Thompson is not just an actor who plays conservative leader types on TV and the silver screen. He's not even primarily an actor, and unlike Reagan, acting was not even his first career.
Thompson was, at first, an attorney and prosecutor - real-life roles with major accomplishments that lead him, through a quirk of fate, to a second career as an actor.
Wikipedia lays it all out succinctly:
Thompson was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1967 and commenced the practice of law, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1969-1972. He was the campaign manager for Senator Howard Baker's successful re-election campaign in 1972, which led to a close personal friendship with Baker, and he served as co-chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of the Watergate scandal.
He was responsible for Baker's asking one of the questions that is said to have led directly to the downfall of President Richard Nixon - "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" Also, Thompson's voice has become immortalized in recordings of the Watergate proceedings, asking the key question, "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?"
In 1977, Thompson took on a Tennessee Parole Board case that ultimately toppled Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton from power on charges of selling pardons. The scandal became the subject of a book and a movie titled Marie (1985) in which Thompson played himself, supposedly because the producers were unable to find a professional actor who could play him plausibly. This film launched his acting career...
Papers like the LAT eventually do get around to mentioning that stuff, but they seem unable to resist the "conservatives like him because he's an actor just like Reagan" meme. Yeah, both men were actors. Thompson even appears on a TV show titled Law & Order, while Reagan was in a movie titled Law and Order.
But Thompson isn't Ronald Reagan 2. He's Fred Dalton Thompson, an accomplished attorney, prosecutor, politician and actor. And possibly the next President of the United States.
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