ElephantBiz readers may be wondering what happened to yesterday's installment of The Daily Fred. The answer: I was very busy. It will return Monday. Consider this post a partial replacement:
Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard spent four hours with Fred Thompson and wrote what may well be the definitive piece on the possible presidential candidate.
By the end of the conversation, two unexpected realities had emerged. If he joins the race for the Republican nomination, and if he campaigns the same way he spoke to me last week, Fred Thompson, a mild-mannered, slow-talking southern gentleman, will run as the politically aggressive conservative that George W. Bush hasn't been for four years. And the actor in the race could well be the most authentic personality in the field.
Read the whole thing. Also, Neil Cavuto of Fox News's Your World program blogged an interesting, and I think very revealing, anecdote about Thompson. Cavuto wrote about Fred's entourage when Thompson appeared on Cavuto's show last week...
One final footnote on Fred Thompson. It's a little thing, but it struck me and my executive producer Gary Schreier as we greeted him this week: He came alone.
Alone -- no handlers, no enablers, no key people, no any people. Just Fred, by himself. And Gary and I are thinking, hey this guy is tracking sometimes second in GOP polls for president. For president! Of the United States!!
And we're looking for his entourage, his hangers-on, you know, the guy who holds his briefcase. Another, his cell phone, still another his coat. Someone who polices his words, advises him on statements to the press.
Nope. No briefcase guy. Or cell phone dude. No policy wonk or statement checker. No people at all. Get this: I had more people than he had people.
Which tells you something about Fred, I guess: The image things that seem to matter to others don't much matter to Fred.
Surely, I'm thinking to myself, this will all change if he runs for president. Even the loserest of candidates has loser lemmings. Lots of them!
But I wonder: Maybe Fred would be the guy who puts less stock in handlers and more in himself.
He'd be different, that's for sure. His people weren't saying that --- Fred was. Before he shook my hand after our interview and walked out of this building... alone.
If the American people want different - and are tired of the lemmings and the image-handlers and the spin - then Fred will rocket to the top of the polls the day he enters the race.
The Daily Fred will return on Monday.
If I were Cavuto, I wouldn't be so impressed that Fred came to the building alone. Frankly, 1) that would change as a candidate and 2) it's not that special to begin with - by which I mean, it's not all it's cracked up to be, and the "man-of-the-peopleness" of it is perhaps a bit overblown. (Were his handlers told to wait in the car, I wonder?)
Politicians and would-be politicians aren't gods. They aren't omniscient, or omnipotent. They're human. The fact that a politician needs someone to whisper in their ear, "That's Betty Sue Blake, she's a dairy farmer's wife, and has a son on Iraq" shouldn't be vilified. It's a positive thing that helps them remember people.
And someone to tag along to keep track of ALL the interviews Fred is going to be doing in May (or June!) will be an absolute necessity.
Posted by: Stephen | April 16, 2007 7:46 PM | Permalink to Comment