Candidate profiles: Fred Thompson proud of laid-back demeanor
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By Ed Tibbetts | Friday, December 21, 2007 |
About the nicest adjective some analysts have applied to Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson is he’s laid back.
More often, they’re apt to call his campaign lethargic, dull, lazy, sleepy-eyed — or in the words of a conservative columnist, “fizzy as day-old cherry Coke.”
Thompson, if he cares, doesn’t show it.
In fact, he seems to wear his demeanor — and his campaign’s pace — quite proudly.
Take when he walked into the Thunder Bay Grille restaurant in Davenport this month.
Barely had he begun speaking when he acknowledged the criticism. He said it reminds him of his first run for the Senate in Tennessee in 1994.
“It’s kind of funny because the same things I hear about myself today, I heard about then,” he told a room of more than 150 people. “Does he want it bad enough? Is he ambitious enough? Did he get in soon enough? All those things that didn’t, to me, have anything to do with the future of our country seemed to consume the attention of the chattering classes a whole lot.”
In the end, he told the crowd, his campaign went from 20 points down to a 20-point win. And it happened in a state that Democrat Bill Clinton carried.
“I think I know a little something about winning elections,” Thompson said.
With little time left before the Jan. 3 caucuses, Thompson trails in most polls, lagging behind Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and, often, Rudy Giuliani.
He’s trying to change, however. Thompson cranked up a bus tour, heavy with stops at local newspapers and town squares. And in perhaps the biggest boost to his Iowa campaign thus far, he won U.S. Rep. Steve King’s endorsement. The conservative Republican from western Iowa is a favorite of the right.
“There is only one candidate who epitomized the full spectrum of our conservative values,” King said. He said Thompson was the best candidate when it came to appointments to the Supreme Court, something he called a “destiny issue.”
Thompson’s entry into the presidential race was much anticipated. There was speculation he would consolidate conservatives unhappy with the records or prospects of the rest of the field.
It hasn’t worked out that way, but what Thompson has done along the way is win plaudits for substantive policy proposals on immigration, taxes and Social Security.
On Social Security, for example, he says the government needs to change the way it pays out future benefits, tying it to the consumer price index. What that will do is lower the rate of increase, something some economists think is essential to the retirement program’s long-term future.
He also proposes allowing people to create private accounts.
“There’s no reason to run for president of the United States if you can’t tell the American people the truth about complex issues like Social Security,” Thompson said while rolling out the plan last month.
He also proposes cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 27 percent and ending the alternative minimum tax, which was initially instituted to catch rich people who avoided paying taxes but now is threatening to ensnare more middle-class taxpayers.
There have been proposals to fix the tax so it goes back to its original intent, but some conservatives want to get rid of it.
Bill Edmonds, a Davenport man who left a job as a car salesman in Wyoming two years ago to be closer to his grandchildren, said Thompson is the “true conservative” in the race. He said people who just see Thompson as laid back miss his strength.
“I come from the state of Wyoming. We’re kind of the same way,” said Edmonds, who is a volunteer leader for Thompson in the Quad-City area. “We’re pretty laid back. We don’t get real excited about things until somebody excites us. Fred is going to be there.”
Thompson is perhaps best known today for the roles he’s played in such movies as “The Hunt for Red October” and on television’s “Law & Order,” where he played prosecutor Arthur Branch.
Thompson gained initial fame as legal counsel for Republicans during the Watergate hearings. And his career got a big boost in the late 1970s when he represented a woman fired from Tennessee’s parole board for failing to help the politically connected. The case became a movie in which Thompson starred.
Thompson got to the Senate by winning a special election in 1994, then a full, six-year term in 1996.
He focused on stopping nuclear proliferation and, in 1997, led a Senate investigation into the Clinton White House’s fundraising.
Thompson faces long odds in Iowa, although he’s performed better in most national polls. Here, he appears to be targeting Mike Huckabee, criticizing his record as governor of Arkansas and frowning on his foreign policy credentials.
Thompson may blame the attention to his demeanor on the “chattering classes,” but interviews with Iowans say that they, too, are paying attention to how all this is translating in national polls.
“If I don’t see national support for Thompson, then I’m going to support the candidate who’s the best conservative,” George Templer, a conservative activist from Davenport, said earlier this month.
Over the next couple weeks, Thompson is seeking to make that case. He said from now until Jan. 3, he’s going to spend a lot of time in the state.
Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.
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