Underdog?
When liberals in this world appear
and break the laws that they should fear
and fleece all who see or hear
the cry goes up both far and near
for FDT! FTD! FDT! FDT!Sphincter tightning, snore of thunder
warning all we’re going under
FDT…FDT - FDT!
Okay, so I’ll never make a second career of infringing on Weird Al Yankovic’s gimmick. But even the most diehard Fred-head has got to admit that the bloom has started coming off his nearly-almost-just about rose.
Don’t believe me? Just ask a diehard Romneyan:
Here’s my big concern about Fred: I’m very worried about entrusting the most complex CEO job in the world to someone or anyone who’s never run anything bigger than a six person law firm. Thompson has no executive experience, and it shows in the way he’s run his campaign. The indecision, the lack of direction, the organizational incoherence – these are hallmarks of a rookie CEO. Anyone who’s ever run anything knows what I’m talking about. You get better at it as you go along, and there’s a pretty steep learning curve.
Unfortunately for Fred, POTUS isn’t an entry level CEO position. Nor for that matter is running a campaign for the presidency. If you look at the campaigns that have functioned relatively smoothly to date, all of the principals have executive experience….The poorly run campaigns, on the other hand, all have principals who have never run anything more complex than a Fantasy Football League.
Hmmm. That’s an awfully big toe-curler for FDT fans, of which I verged on becoming a couple of months ago. I was aware of Thompson’s dearth of executive background, but he was such a darn good communicator, and seemed to be taking on the Dems more than any of the declared candidates, compared to whom Fred seemed eminently presidential….well, it was easy to ignore.
No more, though. The fact that he still hasn’t gotten in the race seems to me to be indicative of the validity of Dean Barnett’s criticism. Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a boomerang but for the fact that FDT’s “exploratory committee” or whatever he’s calling his proto-campaign threw out all the same throat-clearing hints and teases about their guy’s hat going into the ring July 4th week that they’re tossing around about his getting in next week after Labor Day. Of course, had Fred made good on the first round of rumor-mongering, he’d still have had all the personnel turnover, and that still would have garnered unwanted bad press. But at least he’d have been in the race; dangling the prospect over the GOP electorate may have been enticing at first, but now it’s just annoying, to the degree that it isn’t yawn-inducing. And if he does jump in next week, it won’t be the Michael-Moore-cannonball-off-the-ten-meter-platform it may once have been.
That’s not the only knock on Fred these days. Michael Reagan buried him in a Fox News interview for not being…well, Ronald Reagan. Like any of the declared GOP hopefuls are. Echoing the denizens of Giuliani Central Hub, the Gipper offspring who hasn’t tried to exploit his legendary father for causes he would find abhorrent slammed FDT for “having no specifics” - which he really can’t since, of course, he isn’t an “official” candidate - and lacking his dad’s “sunny optimism”.
The latter seems to be a byproduct of the Jeremiaic tack Fred has taken of late, dispensing genuine “straight talk” about the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism, the need to rebuild our military to fight that war everywhere it needs to be fought, and the looming entitlements crunch that everybody else wants to pretend isn’t hanging over American economic prosperity like the proverbial Sword of Damocles. If Ronald Reagan once said he was going to govern as though he was never going to run again, Fred Thompson appears to be running as though he never expects to get the chance to govern in the first place.
But is that necessarily true? J-Ger observes that the “sobriety” of Fred’s technically-not-campaign rhetoric is nothing new at all, and reflects his speeches and writings dating back to the spring. It didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for his prospective candidacy back then; the only thing that’s changed since is the aforementioned loss of novelty-sheen.
Moreover, as Geraghty points out in another post, the mood of the Republican electorate may just be ripe for a guy who “tells it like it is”:
On optimism, I’m reminded of a couple of comments in the Corner after the first debate. First, Andy McCarthy:
Optimism is a major problem if it causes one to discount huge difficulties (see, e.g., the sunny assumption that democracy will quickly take hold in the Muslim world because we are all supposedly hard-wired to love freedom) or becomes an excuse to avoid confronting huge difficulties (see, e.g., the sunny assumption that diplomacy will make Iran stop building nukes, stop promoting terror, stop destabilizing Iraq, etc.). I am not an optimist in these regards, and I would prefer if my next president isn’t either.
I love, love, love Reagan and I love, love, love optimism…but someone out there is going to gag on Reagan/optimism comments after a while.
Lots of members of the GOP base are pissed-off. They’re pissed-off about runaway spending and the size of government, they’re pissed off (fairly or not) that we aren’t fighting the war on terror with both hands, they’re pissed off that Republicans seem (again, fairly or not) so meek in the face of criticism… Meanwhile, Giuliani seems to have forgotten why he’s the front runner. Optimism is nice, hooray for cheeriness. But what the base wants to here is proof that he’s going to be the “tough S.O.B. — for us.”
And there appears to be Fred’s problem. He’s telling it to us ”with the bark on” about the war and entitlements and other political “third rails,” but is perceived (fairly or not) as too vaccillating to even make up his mind if he wants to be the person to whom the American people turn for the tough, courageous leadership it will take to face and solve these problems.
FDT is doing a splendid job of running for “voice in the wilderness.” Problem is, that particular job is rarely, if ever, on presidential resumes.
