What’s the Matter with Fred?

Here comes another negative article about Fred Thompson. Big surprise. You’ve heard it all before: Fred got in too late; Fred’s cranky, lazy, a dumb Tennessee hick too, and does he even really want to be president? The headlines have been relentless: “Fred Thompson Bombs On Campaign Trail,” “Thompson’s Motivation Hard to Pinpoint,” “Thompson’s scarlet ‘L’,” “Fred’s Folly.” One story fuels another and another until Thompson fades into irrelevancy—at which point the media move on, their mission accomplished, leaving behind only the ravaged carcass of another presidential candidacy. For Thompson, that moment already may have arrived. Have you heard the latest? Another big surprise: Fred’s falling like a rock in the polls.

You can almost hear the laughter from all the writers, columnists, bloggers, radio talk-show hosts and TV blabbers—hah! Thompson thought he could run for president his own way, breaking rules imposed long ago by the national media/political establishment, and look where it’s gotten him: If he finishes poorly in the Iowa Republican caucuses in only three weeks—a weak third or even fourth is probable, according to the latest polls—then we won’t have Thompson to kick around anymore. “... [W]atching him campaign is like watching a big bear stand up and try to dance on ice,” the GOP media consultant Mike Murphy chortled on NBC’s Meet the Press back when they still spent time discussing Fred. Yes, the media can be a pitiless bitch.

I was channel-surfing the other night and there suddenly was the craggy-faced Thompson on my TV screen as District Attorney Arthur Branch in a particularly frustrating moment during an episode of Law & Order. “What the hell,” Thompson growled, throwing his spectacles on his desk. “At my age, I ought to be fishing anyway.” That’s funny, I thought, the real-life Thompson has got to be thinking the same thing.

Catching up with Thompson in South Carolina last week, I expected to find a doddering, dour shell of the likable ol’ Fred we once knew in Tennessee. Instead, he’s surprisingly energetic and appealing in his public appearances, not at all like what the media has been telling us. His audiences are enthusiastic and fairly robust by today’s campaign standards—well more than 100 people at each stop in the state’s rolling upcountry region. The crowds come alive when he emphasizes his big selling point, which is that he’s the one electable, true conservative in the race.

“The thing that I’m most proud of is that I am in the same place today in my principles as I was when I first set foot on the political stage. I’m the same guy now as I was then and I’ll be the same guy tomorrow. You can count on that,” Thompson says to applause at a Greenville cafe. “I can’ t help but get a little amused when I see my colleagues running for president coming here from other parts of the country and kind of remaking themselves against what they’ve been in their political careers for the last 20 years. I thought I was the only actor in this race. They’re putting me to shame.”

Thompson is besieged for snapshots and autographs at the end of each event, proof that he retains charisma at least for some. (“Just because he’s not jumping up and down screaming like Hillary hopped up on diet pills, that doesn’t mean he’s lazy,” one woman assures me.) If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was doing fairly well in this campaign. Too bad for Thompson he’s not attracting much news coverage anymore since his poll numbers went south.

In a Wall Street Journal interview back in March, Thompson mused aloud about the nature of his then-unannounced candidacy: “Politics is now one big 24-hour news cycle, but we seem to spend less time than ever on real substance. What if someone harnessed the Internet and other technologies and insisted on talking about real issues in more depth than consultants would advise? What if they took risks with their race in hopes that the risks to our children could be reduced through building a mandate for good policy?”

We now know the answer to those questions. That candidate would get creamed.

Congressman Zach Wamp, the Republican from Chattanooga who helped persuade Thompson to run in the first place, is one who thinks the national media have been out to get Fred. Thompson chose to declare late, thumbing his nose at the system, telling Jay Leno when he announced in September, in fact, that he “wasn’t in the room when they made the rules.” He would decline to join the rest of the candidates in the money-grubbing, poll-driven, sound bite-dominated, nonstop bullshit of modern presidential campaigning. Or at least he wouldn’t do it until he felt like it. And for that, Wamp tells the Scene, the media are making Thompson pay.