Fred Thompson, actor and political candidate, will not be President of the United States. As this fine article points out, that is a pity. He was too normal, apparently.
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20 comments to Fred Thompson |
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I disagree. Someone who will go through that in order to obtain power and feel loved by the crowds is, IMHO, pathological and probably should be relieved of his car keys and sharp objects.
Johnathan, that is pretty much that Paul’s view was too (Thompson was to normal too sane to be President)
As a dispirited Thompson backer, this train of thought may make us feel a little better about him being out of the race. And calling someone who would run for president pathological may also allow us to feel comfortable in loathing any leader who does obtain the reigns of power. But, I won’t feel any better when we get socialized medicine and a big fat dose of Kyoto influenced regulation.
Thompson was the only candidate who actually said things that remotely jived with Reagan-style skeptical conservatism. I know many people here like Paul, but that guy is just off. Even when I agree with him, I’m not sure he’s any less pathological than the other candidates.
Lastly, the other thing we have to admit about Fred is that he ran an awful disorganized campaign. He may have sang a great tune, but there is not evidence that he had any sort of executive competence. I’m not saying competence is all that matters or that’s any more important than ideology, but I think a Thompson White House would not have been a well oiled machine with any ability to react to the incredible forces aligned against an administration that had his ideological stamp.
It truly is a shame and bodes ill for the future.
The jist of the article was not that someone can be too normal or sane to be President but more that a “normal” person doesn’t stand a good chance in our election process. It seems that the media has a checklist of what constitutes the successful candidate and if you don’t get a checkmark in the various behavior boxes then a candidate is branded with the “not having what it takes” stigma.
Our election process is utterly f*cked up, and that is a fact. As I read somewhere this past week, what we’re left with now is like choosing your own rapist.
Interesting that both Fred Thompson and Rudy Guliani declined to campaign in the media-approved fashion — and now both are out.
The sad implication is that advertising works, and that free advertising from the Main Stream Media is powerful. Which may be a symptom of voters not paying enough attention — even the supposedly highly-motivated primary voters.
relieved of his car keys and sharp objects
Actually, I believe we have accomplished this much. Presidents never drive themselves anywhere, and I would be shocked to learn that they have anything at all in their pockets. Why should they, when everything they need to supplied for them by an army of servants?
That was one GOOD article; it only had one fault: it did not say how you could sort out the problem.
For example, it seems to me that now the media have decided that McCain is the new GOP-candidate-to-be, when less than a dozen states have actually had their primaries. But how you prevent the media from spinning themselves into what they want to portray and saying it is what the public wanted? As the Anthropogenic Global Warming crusade shows, repeat the same lie over and over and people will believe it, even if it is all complete bollocks. You could say that limitations should be imposed on the press, but that would go against the First Amendment; so what then?
As so often, whenever I try and write a comment I lose my internet connection.
This and “Outlook Express” still not working.
The universe is clearly telling me to leave.
Still – yet another go:
If commercial advertising always worked then Mitt Romney would have won every contest – as he spent ten times more than any other Republican on ads.
However, I take the point about the free advertising via media attention.
The “look at me, look at me!, LOOK AT ME!” antics that candidates have to engage in every second of every day.
I may have been too harsh in calling such antics “insane”, but they certainly show an odd cast of mind.
There is also the question of the false statements.
For example, Mike Huckabee often stated that he had reduced taxation.
I listened to his voice and looked into his eyes (as much as one can via television) and there was no sign of a lie. But, in reality, taxation had greatly increaced under Governor Huckabee.
Mitt Romney often talked of his support for more free market health care and lower taxation – but in reality his health care plan meant that health care in Mass is even less free market than it was before he turned up, and (of course) taxation went up under Governer Romney.
Senator McCain would say, for example, “no one in Congress who has served in the military is in favour of waterboarding” and Congressman Hunter (ex combat Marine) would point out that he did support it. And a few minutes later Senator McCain would say again “no one in Congres who has served in the military is in favour of waterboarding”.
I am not saying that the full time politicals like Huckabee, Romney and McCain are liars.
I am sure they believe every word they say – which is rather scary.
Yes and I am sure that “we gave him the gas” Ron Paul is perfectly honest as well.
As is “moderate” “uniter” Senator Obama, with his 100% leftist voting record.
Lastly, the other thing we have to admit about Fred is that he ran an awful disorganized campaign.
I dunno how much of that is his fault. Due to Bush not endorsing a successor, various people began laying groundwork for their presidential runs right after the last congressional midterms, staring with hiring experienced campaign managers- and there aren’t as many people who have experience running national campaigns in the US as you might think. The pool of talent with that skill turns out to be fairly shallow…. and it was pretty much dry by the time Thompson decided to get in.
Personally, I wish he would have hung on until one of the leading candidates had dropped out and cherry-picked their staff, but it was not to be.
To say a man who was a politician, a lobbyist, a lawyer, and an actor was ‘normal’ is rather amusing.
Anyway, Thompson fans need to just accept that Thompson ran a lousy campaign. He entered so late that by the time he did, the excitement about him had disappeared, and he didn’t even bother to attempt to fight for New Hampshire, a state I would have thought he could have done respectably in. Instead, he barely campaigned there just before the primary and got about 2% of the vote.
If he didn’t like campaigning, that is just too damn bad really. Campaigning may be a load of shit, but America is a democracy, and hence part of America’s political process is to humiliate yourself and pander to the booboisie. I have never heard Thompson ever say a word against democracy, so he can’t really complain.
I’ve never understood your obsession with that one statement. Did you have a traumatic experience as a child, when somebody accused you of causing their flatulence? I don’t know if it’s accurate or not, I assume that Dr Paul is privy to things (like national security briefings) that I don’t have access to. I do know that we gave and sold many weapons to Iraq, as we do to nearly every country on earth, but I don’t know if the gas (or it’s chemical precursors) were in his (American taxpayer funded) booty or not. But who cares? Even if inaccurate, is one statement about a trivial matter (whether we provided gas — in addition to the acknowledged guns, bombs, grenades, planes, etc — to this particular dictator) really worth worrying about at this late date?
well, looks like we’re down to two transnational socialists and a national socialist. I’m pulling the trigger and voting for the tranzi nominee in the hopes that the RNC gets the message and gets its shit together for 2012, like McCain won’t get stomped by either of the others anyway.
If a certain party would abandon its delusional foreign policy I’d move over there.
Why of course, Ron Paul got the narrative right, so what does it matter that these particular ‘facts’ are made up. Like you say Rich, “Who cares?” Clearly a little thing like truth should never get in the way of utopia. Your kind have the moral prerogative to say whatever it takes to get what you want.
spidly,
If you help put a pseudo-Republican into the White House, you are putting a muzzle on all of the real Republicans in the Congress.
Vote for gridlock, aka checks and balances.
Midwesterner; yep – I almost feel like having a good Hillary-esque sob “I just don’t want to see us fall backwards, no….. but some of us are right and some of us are named McCain and a crazy rotten sack of monkey dung….” (I’ll just go ahead and just name the guy I’m taking a jab at)
………………………..
if Paul said that he’s wrong in fact and narrative
SIPRI – no friend to the US – says the US gave a total 200 million to Saddam through the 80’s up to the first gulf war. The only other aid was satellite intel on Iranian troops. That ranks us 13th or 14th in contributions equal to that of Denmark. nothing was given between wars by the US. the biologicals saddam bought were legally available on the open market – I don’t remember what
year someone finally said we ought not let US companies sell that sort of thing to certain people.
USSR/Russia gave 25 – 30 billion and continued support after the first gulf war and broke all sanctions.
China and France tie for 2nd at 3 billion and they both ignored sanctions as did the bulk of the world. France was the other major source for biologicals and I don’t think they ever stopped selling them.
You really don’t know jack shit about the subject then as the USA was minor bit part player when it came to selling weapons to the Ba’athists.
Rich Paul.
I mentioned the statement because it was typical of the sort of anti American stuff Ron Paul was being fed.
However, now he has filed for Texas 14 again (and I hope he wins) there is a chance that he will break off contact with the people who fed him stuff like that.
As for my childhood.
Yes it was terrible. It was not all bad (the summers were fine) but most of it was very bad.
About the only thing that did NOT happen was someone accuse me of being the source of the gas they were responsible for.
Still I do not see the relevance of my childhood to any of this.
Many human beings (not just me) have lives that are not worth living, if we do not have the courage to kill ourselves it is no one else’s fault but our own.
Cynic:
Sadly true. One goes into a campaign before one peaks (or, at least, as one peaks). One should not wait so long that one’s support starts to go down.