Fred's dubious bed-fellow

How sad one isn't about Fred Thompson's lovely fundraising disaster.
Thompson is going to have to stop flying for free on his buddy's jet - because the fundraiser friend has a criminal drug-dealing history.
Oh, how the Republicans targeted Hillary when they found a shadow in a fundraiser's history.
They had better eat their niggardly words.
And, accordiong to the LA Times, this embarrassment for the hideously egocentric quasi actor candidate co-incides with his pulling rank among the candidates - putting Huckabee in his place. Huckabee has been on the rise - which is unsurprising when one considers that, among the GPO drears, he is really quite personable and able to crack a joke. Of course, he is also a born-again and a creationist, all of which should eliminate him from all running as a presidential candidate. One wishes. It remains a bone-chilling worry. But there one has George W. Bush as president - an example of all the qualities on would dread.

The Mormon is doing well, too. I read that I am not supposed to refer to Romney by his religion but, guess what? I will refer to him however I wish - and the fact that he is a mormon is the first thing that comes to mind. The only thing that comes to mind.
The super conservatives are not mormons - they tend to be fundamentalist born-again types. But they see the mormon as one of their own - and they have given him their seal of approval. Very telling.

For those of us who believe in a separation of church and state - and who positively abhor all this religious extremism, this is something of a worry.

We pin our hopes on the Dems.

The Fred factor

Now Fred Thompson has had his first official exposure on the dais amid the hard-working lineup of Republican presidential candidates, the political pundits, endlessly and laboriously chewing the cud of opine, seem to have pronounced him okay.
Not great. But at least a fresh face.
If you could call that overexposed face "fresh".
In fact there is nothing fresh about Fred. He is a tedious ego.
I thought his attitude in the Republican debate was patronising. Quite frankly, he gives the impression that he thinks he is just such a star that becoming president would be a come-down.
The media questions him for laziness and commitment. Good questions.
But the public, especially in America, has an inbuilt admiration not just for successful people but for television stars. Despite the fact that he is potentially a worse president than Bush, despite the fact that his first debate was beyond lacklustre, despite the fact that he could not be bothered to exert himself in campaigning like the others and entered the race at the last possible moment...despite all, there are lots of wide-eyed fools out there who are agog with excitement about him - and he will probably fare well in the polls.

It should all make more sense.
One can only hope that common sense prevails and, in the end of the day next November, all the Republican candidates are irrelevant.

Doing the hard yards

It'd s game of stamina and determination as the candidates roll on towards the yet-to-be-revealed NH Primary date at year's end. They must be getting sick of the sound of their own voices. I know I am a bit tired of hearind the same things said over and over - even when I agree with the sentiments.

On Sept. 18, calling for raised capital gains taxes and tax relief aimed at elderly and middle-class Americans, Barack Obama said: "If you talk about this in polite company, sooner or later you’ll get accused of waging class warfare. As if it’s distasteful to point out that some CEO’s make more in 10 minutes than a worker makes in 10 months."

Don't hold the presses.
Those are the same words he uttered when I heard him in the Nashua Seniors Centre months ago.
No blame to Barack. Hillary is repeating herself, too, albeit that she has saved a few goodies such as the health plan details to give the media a new hook here and there.
They are all repeating themselves, except for the ghastly Fred Thompson who has yet to say anything worth repeating.

This is an epic campaign, testing the strength and staying power of all the candidates. Having seen close up the schedules they keep as they sweep through the states and the myriad fairs, garden parties, town hall meetings, rallies and campaign office visits, one comes to realise that these presidential hopefuls are doing the hard, hard yards. Astronauts have it easy by comparison.

To big for presidential boots

Oh, my, talk about the star making the late entrance.
Fred Thompson has finally declared his intention to run as a candidate in the Republican presidential primary.
Surprise it is not, since he has been campaigning for months. No, it's a big yawn.
What is surprising, however, is the aggressively bad taste of his choice of time and place.
With things coming down to the bone in Iowa, the other candidates were hammering it out in the fiestiest CNN GOP debate yet.
Fred chose to hang back from lining up on a stage with them.
Those politicians are not really his own kind.
Fred is a better kind.
He is a showbiz star. He can rub shoulders with the popular boys.
And so he chose to declare his intention to run as a candidate for president to Jay Leno.
Jay is his kind.
After all, more people would be watching the Tonight Show than the debate, surely.
I am not sure what are the ethics of this sort of manipulation of the media. Jay may think it is a bit of a scoop to have that second-rate actor making his declaration on his show but, truth is, the second-rate actor with presidential ambitions was using Jay and Jay's popularity for his own ends.
It is sleazy.
But the star has shown his hand. He has shown that he believes the voters will be more swayed by his celebrity than by the political positions of his rivals.
He patronises the public with this assumption - the assumption that they are all shallow idiots blinded by fame and oblivious to national priorities.

One can only hope that he is wrong.

Political baggage check

Poll-watching is the sport of the moment. It is not unpleasant since it is Hillary Clinton's name which is up there on top. She continues to work the country - as they all do. Campaigning for the nomination is an exhausting business - and after a full year of that, the winning candidates will face another ten months of campaigning to win the presidency. This game is not for the weak or lazy.

Which is why I think it is probably a good idea that the actor/Republican Fred Thompson stays out there in undecided land. One gathers from the biographical details that laziness has been a lifelong characteristic. This explains why he has still not declared his candidacy - despite displacing Romney, McCain and others in the polls.

The Republican race is honing down to Giuliani versus Romney. They both have a lot of baggage so it will be interesting to see how the media weighs it up and penalises them both. In an odd way, it is the same baggage. Wives. Giuliani is much maligned for the fact that he is on his third wife. Romney derives from not only a religion but a family which represents polygamy. Of course Romney regularly reiterates the official line that the Mormons discontinued polygamy in 1890. But it is not so. Right when Romney needs it least, HBO has come up with Big Love, a brilliant television drama series which portrays the various worlds of Mormon polygamy and everyone is riveted and learning about Mormonism. Big Love is a "now" series about a "now" issue.
Sooner or later, Romney will have to stop sidestepping this and come clean on his religion.
And while he is at it, some of us would like to know about how he made the millions which set him up as the richest presidential candidate, worth a quarter of a billion dollars? It is my impression that much of this wealth was creamed off from that business management business by which companies are bought, scaled right back and then sold off. People and their jobs are the casualties of this ugly business game. And while workers are laid off, management consultants responsible for the ruthless toecutting are fleecing away immense fees. Perhaps some of those displaced workers will hold up their hands as the campaign evolves. Surely they are Romney baggage we have yet to see. Where are you mainstream media? Get digging.


Whichever of the front runners America chooses, it will have to be over the barrel of at least one major cultural hurdle....
An Italian who does not keep his wedding vows.
A millionaire Morman.
A black man.
A woman.

Repubs field a new runner

A new candidate seems set to enter the Republican presidential primary race.
His name is Fred Thompson and, as a former senator, he is best known as a character in the television series Law and Order.
He is uber conservative - pro-life, pro-gun, pro-war, anti-gay marriage. I can't find evidence that he is a creationist, but he is described rather scarily as "saviour" for the political aspirations of the Christian right.
Of course, in a Republican mood of gushing retrospective adulation for movie star Prez Ronald Reagan, it suits that Thompson is an actor, a face familiar to KFC-munching families across the land. The people find nothing more reassuring than to be led those who have entertained them in their living rooms - viz Governor Schwarzenegger, Mayor Clint Eastwood, Congressman Sonny Bono, Governor Jesse Ventura...
So, Fred Thompson is not even officially declared, but polling way ahead of frontrunners Romney and Giuliani. What does this tell us?
I think the New York Times had it in the can back in 1994 when it reported:

"The glowering, hulking Mr. Thompson has played a White House chief of staff, a director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a highly placed F.B.I. agent, a rear admiral, even a senator. When Hollywood directors need someone who can personify governmental power, they often turn to him."

And now the country is turning to him.


There is another move afoot - a delicious undercurrent of subversion I have been observing here and there on the bumpers of cars.

I'll drink to that!