Presidential wanna-be’s and the great national debate

  • I found this arti­cle on Town­hall talki­ing about the pos­si­bil­ity of Fred Thomp­son run­ning for pres­i­dent, and sent it on to Greg, because he had just been telling me recently what a good can­di­date Thomp­son would be. I hadn’t heard of him before, but Greg’s opin­ion squares with this columnist’s:

    It is a major devel­op­ment because Thomp­son has so many unde­ni­able qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the nom­i­na­tion. First and fore­most, he is a true-blue con­ser­v­a­tive, com­fort­able with all the posi­tions on social issues (abor­tion, gay rights, gun con­trol, etc.) that give Rudy Giu­liani so much dif­fi­culty and that have inspired John McCain and Mitt Rom­ney to “flip-flop” in recent years to curry favor with social con­ser­v­a­tives. In the sec­ond place, he is (as his tele­vi­sion career demon­strates) an immensely attrac­tive per­son­al­ity at 64, with a rum­pled and thought­ful charm. Thirdly, his ser­vice for eight years in the U.S. Sen­ate (four times Barack Obama’s cur­rent tenure) attests to his suc­cess as a polit­i­cal leader. And finally, he hails from a bor­der state — Ten­nessee — with all that implies for elec­tabil­ity in the South and elsewhere.

    The sec­ond and third points are good enough — who wouldn’t want a pres­i­dent with “rum­pled and thought­ful charm”? — but it’s the first one that means the most to me. And it seems to me that even if you’re not a con­ser­v­a­tive, you might want a “true-blue” con­ser­v­a­tive for the Repub­li­can can­di­date as well

    The rea­son is to advance the national debate at least one step. Lib­er­als say that the inter­ests of all Amer­i­cans would be best served by a lib­eral agenda intel­li­gently and vig­or­ously car­ried out. Con­ser­v­a­tives say the same about a con­ser­v­a­tive agenda.

    We have now tried a “New Demo­c­rat” — Clin­ton — and a “com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­v­a­tive” — Bush. In order to mol­lify fence-sitters, we’ve had both a Repub­li­can and a Demo­c­rat that have watered down the agenda, to the annoy­ance of their party loy­al­ists, the fury of their respec­tive kook fringes and the befud­dle­ment of the fence-sitters them­selves. Clin­ton did it with NAFTA and pulling back from health­care reform, not to men­tion hav­ing to com­pro­mise on get­ting gays openly into the mil­i­tary. Bush has done it with his prof­li­gate un-Republican spend­ing, his com­pro­mises on things like No Child Left Behind and the pre­scrip­tion drug pro­gram, and his posi­tion on immi­gra­tion (work visas?).

    It seems like no mat­ter which Demo­c­rat we have as a can­di­date, we’re likely to get a no-compromise, no-holds-barred liberal.

    Dandy!

    Let’s stop waf­fling, for good­ness’ sake. Bring on Hillary or Obama, and I hope they’re as pinko/lefty/Socialist as they wanna be. It’s time to find out once and for all who’s right — uh, cor­rect, I mean. If the ide­ol­ogy of pure lib­er­al­ism is as destruc­tive as I think it is, it’ll be clear to every­one that it isn’t the direc­tion we need to be going. If it turns out to be won­der­ful and leads to new days of pros­per­ity, indus­try, strength, peace and moral decency — hur­ray! I would be glad to be proved wrong.

    On the other hand, if we elect a true and unal­loyed con­ser­v­a­tive, I hope the guy doesn’t pull any punches either. There’s sim­ply no point right now in try­ing to build bridges, because the chasm has grown larger than the Grand Canyon. Bush has been try­ing since he got into office to extend the hand of friend­ship and all he has to show for it are bloody stumps where his fin­gers used to be. Besides, sorry to break it to the many peo­ple who have a hor­ror of all dis­pu­ta­tive unpleas­ant­ness, but the sim­ple fact is that nei­ther side want a bridge. Those on the left think they can best gov­ern the coun­try; those on the right think they can best gov­ern the coun­try. Why would you build a bridge away from what you think is the best and only answer to a noisy gag­gle of numbskulls?

    But I’m get­ting ahead of myself. Fred Thomp­son has a real uphill bat­tle — he’s get­ting into the race late, doesn’t have the big back­ers that the other guys have, and hasn’t got a lot of name recog­ni­tion (unless you’re a “Law & Order” fan, maybe, since he’s been a reg­u­lar on that show). There’s a much bet­ter chance that the GOP guy will be Giu­liani or Rom­ney. Giuliani’s stance on gay mar­riage and abor­tion mark him as a “rhino” — Repub­li­can In Name Only — and Rom­ney doesn’t seem to be a true believer either. (There are, of course, other prob­lems with Rom­ney, but that’s a story for another bloggy day.)
    Too bad. It would be great to actu­ally set­tle this debate, or at least have some real evi­dence to go on. Until then, it’s all an unset­tled ques­tion, which means it’s likely to con­tinue being an end­less harangue with both sides try­ing to out-shout each other.

    So, Thomp­son in ’08! Hillary or Obama in ’08! If not, Earplugs and Val­ium in ’09! Rah rah!


    Related posts:

    1. Miers with­draws
    2. Bush nom­i­nated … who now?
    3. Supreme!
    4. Is democ­racy good for what ails ‘em?
    5. More on Miers

    March 13th, 2007 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 03.13.2007

    I actu­ally think that both Thomp­son and Brown­back could be seri­ous con­tenders, and would bring a very inter­est­ing tenor to the race.

  • Grace

    I keep for­get­ting about Brown­back, and he’s even some­what local. I don’t know if he’s man­aged to get any­one excited, but give us some time. If we think we’ll only have McCain and Giu­liani to choose from, Brown­back might start to look better.

  • Mimi

    I sus­pect so. That’s sur­pris­ing he isn’t get­ting a lot of press espe­cially being some­what local.

    While I like Barak Obama in many ways, I cer­tainly know what you mean. The idea of Hillary gain­ing the nom­i­na­tion makes me cringe.

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required