Fred Thompson? Really?

I myself have noted how pathetic the current field of GOP presidential candidates is, but like a lot of liberals I'm scratching my head over the Fred Thompson concept. Yes, Thompson has the advantage of being a conservative Republican. But once we expand the field to include not just senators and governors but former senators and governors as well -- ones who've never accomplished anything in public life, to boot -- then the field looks very wide indeed. Where's Tommy Thompson? Why not Larry Craig? Why not embalm Ronald Reagan's corpse Lenin-style and run it? There's lots of conservatives out there.

At any rate, I hope Thompson does get in the race and it somehow leads to The Hunt for Red October being on television more. His stint on Law and Order was terrible, but I love me a good submarine movie.

Comments

Edwards is a former Senator.

Posted by Trolly McTroll | March 27, 2007 8:47 AM

WAS terrible?

IS Terrible. He's still on the show. I think he's sort of a surrogate for Dick Wolf.

I liked him in the remake of Cape Fear, though.

Fred Thompson trivia: he was the technical advisor on a Sissy Spacek movie about corruption in Tennessee called "Marie" and they gave him a part. That is how he began his showbiz career.

Posted by Swarty | March 27, 2007 8:51 AM

22nd Amendment probably applies to zombie Reagan too.

No, when you consider that your Republican frontrunners include a former mayor of one of the more liberal cities in America, Fred could very well be a psycho-crazy idea whose time has come.

Posted by ploeg | March 27, 2007 8:57 AM

Where's Tommy Thompson?
Running for president, actually.

Posted by Minipundit | March 27, 2007 9:07 AM

He was actually quite good in Barbarians at the Gates

just sayin'

Posted by collin | March 27, 2007 9:10 AM

"like a lot of liberals I'm scratching my head over the Fred Thompson concept."

Are you serious?

In the unlikely event they can push him to the nomination, he'd be an incredibly strong general election candidate.

Why do an alarmingly large number of liberals have such trouble recognizing what plays well on TV?

Posted by Petey | March 27, 2007 9:25 AM

And he was actually pretty convincing playing a slippery far-right-wing white supremacist agitator in a story arc on Wiseguy. Which was actually my personal first exposure to the guy; I was surprised to see him show up several years later on a different TV channel playing a Senator from Tennessee...

Posted by "Charles Dodgson" | March 27, 2007 9:28 AM

This business will get out of control...it will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it.

Posted by movie quote guy | March 27, 2007 9:33 AM

What Petey said. The Republicans have an uncanny knack for making bad actors into successful politicians. I doubt if Thompson will get the nomination, but don't underestimate what they can do with a guy who knows how to hit his mark.

Posted by JHM | March 27, 2007 9:41 AM

Here's a juicy bit of Thompson trivia for you: he guested on "Rosanne" during its first season, playing (if I remember correctly) Rosanne's employer. I agree that he'd make a formidable general election candidate.

Posted by brklynlibrul | March 27, 2007 9:46 AM

Didn't Thompson play a US President in some recent film, about which performance the New Yorker (can't remember if it was Denby or Lane) said something like "Fred Thompson plays a serious and curious chief executive, the only jarringly unrealistic aspect of the film." What film was that?

Posted by Marshall | March 27, 2007 9:47 AM

in the Iowa Political markets, Guiliani is on top (that will change) but the rest of the GOP field is the best candidate -- who could that be? Tommy Thompson (yeah, right). Gingrich (not a chance). Fred Thompson (ok.)

Posted by Howard | March 27, 2007 9:54 AM

Tommy Thompson is in. Why, I don't know.

Posted by James Joyner | March 27, 2007 9:56 AM

If the GOP thinks it can get the L&O vote by running Thompson, the Dems. need only run Steven Hill and we'll have that vote cinched up in a jiffy. And he'll also win the "security parent" vote -- after all, who can do a better job at keeping us safe than someone who's famous line is a mumbly, threatening, almost Don-Vito-Corleone-esque (if the character was supposed to be a Yekke rather than a Sicilian) growl of "make a deal". No Al Qaeda operation would dare attack us: they'd know that once the police capture the low-level operatives, Jack McCoy will motorcycle into the interogation room under direct instructions to "make a deal" ... and once the deal is made, the brains and money people behind the operation would be toast. Constrast that to Bush & CO, who'd lock up the operatives in a dungeon at Gitmo where whatever they do end up saying would be the sort of useless pap that you get via torture: i.e. what they think their torturers would like to hear.

Posted by DAS | March 27, 2007 10:01 AM

I agree with most of the above, so I'll just add an interesting trivia fact:

Fred Thompson is one of two actors of whom I am aware (Mary Lou Henner is the other) who played themselves in a movie (not counting cameos or filmographies). Mary Lou Henner played herself in "Man on the Moon" and Fred Thompson in a really boring movie called "Marie" with Sissy Spacek.

Does anyone have any other examples of this?

Posted by Ken Payne | March 27, 2007 10:01 AM

I suppose it was casting's fault, not Thompson's, but how incredible is it that a right-wing southerner (which is what he appears to be in the show) would be elected district attorney for New York County (Manhattan), where you'd have trouble finding somebody who voted for Bush?

Posted by phil from new york | March 27, 2007 10:10 AM

"in the Iowa Political markets..."

For a wide variety of reasons, Intrade is a much more interesting market to look at.

Thompson is trading around 10 there.

Posted by Petey | March 27, 2007 10:12 AM

Fred Thompson is one of two actors of whom I am aware (Mary Lou Henner is the other) who played themselves in a movie

John Malkovich be'd John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich.

Posted by cleek | March 27, 2007 10:19 AM

"Fred Thompson is one of two actors of whom I am aware (Mary Lou Henner is the other) who played themselves in a movie"

It's not all that uncommon a phenomenon. See The Player for a movie where the majority of characters are playing themselves...

Posted by Petey | March 27, 2007 10:22 AM

"in the Iowa Political markets, Guiliani is on top (that will change) but the rest of the GOP field is the best candidate"

Over at Intrade, I've been throwing money into McCain shares. The guy is trading at 20 because people are stupid. It's very easy money...

Posted by Petey | March 27, 2007 10:24 AM

Fred Thompson is one of two actors of whom I am aware (Mary Lou Henner is the other) who played themselves in a movie (not counting cameos or filmographies). Mary Lou Henner played herself in "Man on the Moon" and Fred Thompson in a really boring movie called "Marie" with Sissy Spacek.

Didn't he also play himself in "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World"? Or was he just "generic Senator" or something? (I haven't, and probably won't, see that film).

Posted by Cain | March 27, 2007 10:58 AM

Guiliani has no public accomplishments? One might not like what they are, but saying he has none isn't stupid, it's insane.

Let's look at the Dems. Hillary! has been a competent Democratic replacement for Al 'Senator Pothole' D'Amato, but since that's not what I think 'accomplishment' means here, her accomplishments would be "None". Edwards? "None". Obama? That would be also "None".

I'm pretty sure I'm leaving some Dems off my list, but I think the answer would be pretty close to "None" for anyone I've forgotten. Except for one. That Richardson guy is a governor, and though I don't know very much about him, if someone told me "None" isn't the correct description of his 'accomplishment' score, I'd be inclined to believe him. Since accomplishment is going to carry the day, I think it might be time to get long him on the Intrade stuff, he's definitely going up, especially when the foreseeable MY endorsement hits the wires.

Posted by j mct | March 27, 2007 12:55 PM

If Thompson does run, will TNT have to yank all its airings of decadent-period L&O to meet equal-time rules?

Music agent Ken Kragen played himself in the HBO movie of The Late Shift. I remember this fondly because when I saw him on the screen, I thought that it was another horrible prosthetic makeup job like they did on the actors playing Leno and Letterman, but it turns out the guy really looks like that.

Posted by Mac | March 27, 2007 12:59 PM

Pathetic comments...

Posted by oldfox | March 27, 2007 1:07 PM

20+ comments and nobody has even mentioned Die Hard 2? Does anyone really dare to suggest that playing an anti-terrorist tough guy on screen isn't a sufficient qualification for the Republican nomination?

Posted by Chilly | March 27, 2007 3:11 PM

"WAS terrible?

IS Terrible. He's still on the show."

Which makes for a heck of a problem for NBC should Fred declare as a candidate.

We in California got a real lesson in "equal time" election law during the recall - who could show what reruns of "Different Strokes" and the Terminator. And if I remember correctly, it went like this: Cable channels can do whatever they want, show whatever they want. But if a declared candidate - such as AHnold or Fred Thompson - shows up on an over-the-air network station, then "equal time" kicks in, and the station has to provide time to any and all opponents.

If Fred declres, NBC has to either stop showing him in new, or any rerun, episodes of "Law And Order". Or provide equal time.

Posted by Robert Earle | March 27, 2007 4:26 PM

On running Reagan's corpse: There actualy is a precedent on the issue of whether electors can vote for a dead man. It happened in 1872 when some Georgia electors decided they would not let the death of Horace Greeley (the Democratic and Liberal Republican candidate who lost in a landslide to Grant) get in the way of their voting for him. But Congress refused to count their votes. (The other D-LR electors split their votes among various living people.)

But with Reagan there is also the 22nd Amendment as an obstacle,as someone pointed out.

Posted by David T | March 27, 2007 5:35 PM

Hey what about Mark Foley? He's well know and he's been in movies too!.

Posted by Chad Okere | March 27, 2007 10:22 PM

There is only one thing to say =
RUN, FRED, RUN!!!!!

Posted by Sissyblue | March 28, 2007 11:47 AM

Fred Thompson is only an accidental actor. He was a Federal prosecutor and Watergate staff attorney, and then later in private practice was the lawyer for a Tennessee state employee who was being fired for whistle-blowing in a corruption scandal (the Democratic governor, Ray Blanton, and his head of pardons and paroles were selling pardons). When the movie "Marie" was made about the scandal, Thompson was a technical advisor. The director didn't like anyone who auditioned to play Thompson, and had Thompson himself take a crack at it. He tends to play gruff, tough-talking officials (admirals, D.A.'s, airport managers, CIA chiefs, etc.), but he comes across less as an actor than as a personality. The same might be said of Ronald Reagan, who, with a few exceptions, usually played the same affable, decent (but sometimes irritable) guy in the movies. I suggest that the image of tough-talking, no nonsense, intelligent but plain-spoken man that Thompson projects both on and off screen would appeal to the undecided voters who distrust politics and politicians of both left and right.

Posted by Mark Edens | March 28, 2007 3:15 PM