Fred Thompson: Strutting And Fretting

Lots of reasons have been given for Mike Huckabee's surge in Iowa: his affability, his grassroots resonance, the fact that he's heavily invested in Iowa at the expense of everywhere else. Well, how about his ability to speak in complete sentences?

That proficiency seemed to far exceed the ability of Fred Thompson in his interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. There, Thompson dithered and mumbled, contradicted himself, didn't seem to know how to project seriousness when the topics turned serious, and didn't know how to even seem glad when he's reflecting on something positive.

What's becoming clear is that Thompson seems to be every bit an actor as people joked that he'd be. Not in the sense that he's a commanding presence, or wields charisma, or is given to skillful declamations, mind you. He's the actor, at a loss when devoid of all those people and all the support that an actor brings on stage with him: a good script, a director, someone to edit him. He needs help! Check out this long and inane answer:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's say it's nine years down the road. You have won. You become president. You've been re-elected president. What's the one accomplishment you would be most proud of?

THOMPSON: That we would have not been attacked and we would not be at war. It would be we would be a safe, strong, and secure country. would free people being able to go about their daily livelihood with a good strong economy based on the principles that we've always had in this country. Where an average guy from Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, if he grows up and plays by the rules, has a chance to live the American dream.

If you parse through that, isn't he just saying the accomplishment he'd be most proud of is winning the presidency at all? Well, you can hardly blame him! In all likelihood, Thompson winning the presidency would be quite an accomplishment!