Is Fred Thompson Too Normal?
Filed under: 2008 elections, Fred Thompson — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on January 2, 2008 @ 2:54 pm CET
Glenn Reynolds wonders whether Fred Thompson is “too sane to be president.” His answer: “Quite possibly.”
The professor explains: “Thompson is running the kind of campaign — substantive, policy-laden, not based on gimmicks or sound-bites — that pundits and journalists say they want, but he’s getting no credit for it from the people who claim that’s what they want. It’s like in Tootsie when Dustin Hoffman tries doing the things he’s heard women say they want from men, only to discover that they don’t really want those things at all.”
That’s the impression I’m getting as well. For years I’ve heard Americans say “what we need is someone who doesn’t want to be president, but who’s willing to be president nonetheless.” Well, guess what: Thompson’s your man then. He makes no secret about the fact that he had no ambition to become president, until he saw that - in his opinion at least - the nation needs him. He’s blasted for it (I’ve criticized him myself because of it mainly because I believe that ambition isn’t a bad thing at all), but those who said this in the past are proven to be hypocrites now that there’s a candidate like that, and they’re going after him because of it.
Not only that, I’ve also constantly heard people say that they want someone who talks about policies, who offers substance, not just soundbites. Again, Thompson does just that. The result? He’s, again, being blasted for it. Other candidates produce 30 seconds ads in which they attack their rivals, Thompson puts out a 17 minute video explaining his policy views.
Thompson is a serious candidate who takes the voters serious as well. He doesn’t ask you to vote for him because he can think of clever one-liners, he asks you to vote for him because he thought deeply about problems and knows what to do about them.
But, he won’t be rewarded for it. That much is clear.
As usual we can conclude one thing: what the masses say they want is all too often the opposite of what they’ll do / support when push comes to shove.
Round-up:
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack:
Here’s what it really comes down to. Fred Thompson is doing what a whole lot of us have wanted politicians to do for a very long time: step away from the dog and pony shows, meet us as equals, and respect us enough to tell us exactly what you want to do and how you want to do it. He ought to get a lot of credit for that. We should be insisting that the other candidates do it, too. Perhaps we can send that message by giving him a few primary wins. Or we could send the message that blow-dried hair, a pretty delivery style, and attack ads that you only kind of “release” (Huckabee, you passive-aggressive ninny) are what we really prefer.
Remember, you encourage the behavior you reinforce.
Patterico: “our moronic news media, which pretends to disdain overambitious candidates and to care about policies — doesn’t really care about substance. For them, it’s all about the horse race, the gimmicks, and the pizzazz. Big Media editors are every bit as superficial as you voters, if not more so.”
Say Anything’s Rob: “It’s the sort of political campaign we all talk about wanting to see when we start getting cynical about politics. I suspect the real problem is that the media makes its bread and butter off of controversial campaign and attention-grabbing grandstanding. But Thompson isn’t willing to dance for them, so he gets tagged as ‘lazy.’ Not because he is lazy, but because he won’t be their trained monkey.”
Jonathan Adler at the Corner: “In short, some say Thompson doesn’t want to be President badly enough. At a time when Presidential wannabes plot their moves years (if not decades) in advance, that should be a feature, not a bug.”
Bob Krumm: “This is a test for Iowa and America. Do we want what we say we want: fewer negative ads and more substance? Will we choose the candidates of glib, glamour and glitz, or the one with gravitas? Will we let money trump one-on-one retail politics? We’ll know in just a few days.”
More opinions at Memeorandum.
1 Rewarding Good Campaign Behavior : The Sundries Shack
January 2, 2008 @ 4:01 pm CET[…] Michael van der Galien has a great roundup on this story over at PoliGazette and some comments of his own. If you’re not reading him […]
2 Tully
January 2, 2008 @ 4:12 pm CETThe flip side of the Huckabee pandering. Thompson isn’t pandering but running as if it were already the general election, and thus his chances are reduced.
3 Michael van der Galien
January 2, 2008 @ 4:29 pm CETTully: yes. And that’s, of course, ironical considering the fact that so many people say they dislike pandering.
On the other hand: people also say they dislike negative campaigning. Yet it works.
4 independent
January 2, 2008 @ 6:14 pm CETThompson never got much coverage regarding his policies in the media, and his late arrival to the race means he didn’t in on the early debates.
Some of his proposals sound solid in proposal statements, but he isn’t very good at articulating it live, on the spot.
The other problem is his political history isn’t completely spotless. Even on conservative websites he’s associated with the Savings&Loan scandals of the 1980s and for having blocked some Congressional investigation into Clinton-China dealings.
5 Allan Stewart
January 2, 2008 @ 6:23 pm CETThe people of Iowa need to recognize that they can keep Fred in the race with their support tomorrow. We need to give him a fair shot at getting the word out.
What the people want and what works in a campaign are different things, largely because of the media filter we receive our news from. The MSM liberals know that the only way the republicans can win in 08 is to unite their base and capture ALL of the southern states. Thompson is the only candidate that can do this. Hence the libs are after him. Then there are Guiliani NY friends in the national news industry, like the president of FOX News. They want Fred shot down early so the conservative base is left only with candidates like Huck that will never win the nomination.
The media reports dissing Fred as lazy or unmotivated are without substance and were written for a reason - not by chance. Looking at how Fred was misquoted and his message distorted is all the evidence we need that those stories were a purposeful attempt to eliminate Fred before he got started.
Republicans that want to win in 08 need to ask themselves why.
6 kritter
January 2, 2008 @ 7:31 pm CETI don’t know if Fred is "too normal". But he doesn’t seem to want the presidency enough to push himself too hard for it. He left the Senate because he disliked the long hours and headed to the easy money land of Hollywood. He may not be suited to the presidency, where many successful presidents were workaholics. Do we really want another president who takes a 5 week vacation in these turbulent and perilous times?
7 C Stanley
January 2, 2008 @ 7:43 pm CETBingo, Michael. And that’s pretty much what I was trying to say in the thread about Huckabee’s use of Christian images and rhetoric. There may be loud complaints about it from certain quarters (esp in the blogosphere, which would lead you to believe that American attitudes toward this were more in line with European’s preference for complete secularization of politics) but in the end, more people are swayed in a positive direction by this than the numbers of people who are turned off by it.
8 Tully
January 2, 2008 @ 8:00 pm CETSeems to me my one-line sentence stands unrefuted. Thompson hasn’t gone sucking up to base factions, but actually developed a position slate and stuck to it. Which is antithetical to the CW on how to win presidential primaries. You usually only see that with third party candidates.