Roger L. Simon: And the winner gets to be.... President?

I can identify with the ambivalence - assuming he is ambivalent - with which Fred Thompson is being tarred in this campaign, because I imagine the process of running for President is even more humiliating than being a screenwriter. In fact, it is not entirely dissimilar. You have to spend your time nodding politely to idiots and pretending everything they say is important and not to be dismissed - for fear in the candidate's case that they won't get a vote and for the screenwriter that they will be fired (pretty much the same thing.)

Of course for someone running for President it's endless and enervating beyond the worst screenwriter's nightmare, but, again similarly, the audience is easily bored. It's not really surprising that the frontrunners in this election are in trouble. I mean who could put up with the same people for that long? It already seems as if Hillary and Rudy have now been president for a couple of years and we're sick unto death of them, the honeymoon long over. We're now midway into the Huckabee and Obama presidencies. Who's next? I hope not Ron Paul... when it really counts. But who knows?

Nevertheless, whoever gets to be President, gets the booby-prize. Think about this. Back in the deep, dark media ages of 1992, when Clinton-Gore ascended, they partied all night long - and several days thereafter. "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" was reprised so many times we were longing for the days of the Macarena (or did they come later - but you know what I am).

But the winner in '08 is not in for party time. They can forget about the rock and roll on January 21, 2009. No time for anything remotely that frivolous. Time to get up and look at the daily intelligence briefing (such as it is). Now let's see... who's getting the bomb this week? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Mozambique?... Where was that suicide explosion? Algeria? Pipe bomb where? What's Russia up to? China? Aren't I supposed to be having fun?... No, sorry, sir or madam, you're the President. No backsies. (Just like Toyota... you asked for it, you've got it.)

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To the next person sitting in the Oval Office, Bush might not seem like Chimpy McHitlerburton after all. But you'll never hear Hillary or Obama say that. We have had a lot of religion injected into politics this cycle. But, if a Dem is in the White House in January 2009, I'll bet he or she will really get religion real fast. Rose Garden = Fox Hole.

The way I see it, Fred was the only man up there speaking his own mind.
From the beginning of this election cycle the criteria for my vote had been border fence, and a firm grasp of the reality regarding climate change (the latter doesn't include pandering to Euro socialist interests or paying lip service to the latest incarnation of the IPCC machine).

Fred is the only pup in the litter who meets my criteria.
How about making him the anti AGW candidate?

Fred is already in this camp, he doesn't have to pretend what he thinks. All he has to do is express himself.

There are a few moments in every campaign where somebody says or does something which is in such perfect harmony with one's own tendencies that...you sort of wish he (or she!) would never utter another word, because you know nobody can sort of stay frozen, as it were, in perfection, at least as you, one solitary little voter, define perfection.

The moment for me was when Fred refused to raise his hand for Schoolmarm Ratched.

That was an oldie but a goody.
Of course, if the reverse is true--I once met a foxhole in an atheist. I was never the same afterwards.

"Back in the deep, dark media ages of 1992, when Clinton-Gore ascended, they partied all night long - and several days thereafter."

Many of us were conned by the Clinton campaign that America could afford to take a vacation from history. "it's the economy, Stupid!" was the strongly adhered core doctrine of his administration. This idiocy allowed the Islamic nihilists to grow in strength. Never again should the citizenry forget that the first and foremost role of the president of the United States is to defend the nation.

"You have to spend your time nodding politely to idiots and pretending everything they say is important and not to be dismissed - for fear in the candidate's case that they won't get a vote and for the screenwriter that they will be fired (pretty much the same thing.)"

The best line of the season. And how true. I like Fred but he hasn't seemed to be all that well organized. I think this will be a brokered convention and who knows what could happen there ? Lincoln was a long shot.

December 14, 2007: And the winner gets to be.... President?

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