‘I’m not particularly interested in running for president’

December 30, 2007

It’s not exactly a secret that Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign isn’t going well. By some measures, that’s a surprise — he’s plenty conservative; he’s never flip-flopped on key issues; and he’s not a member of a religious minority that the GOP base finds offensive. Simply as a matter of process of elimination, this guy should be huge.

There is, of course, a problem: Thompson apparently has no interest in actually running for president.

There’s no shortage of stories about Thompson running a lackluster campaign that seems to include avoiding voters. Here’s a good example. Here’s another, another and another. It’s as if the former senator is allergic to retail politics.

Given all of this, Thompson offered an unusual admission yesterday: his heart’s really not into all of this.

“I’m not particularly interested in running for president,” the former senator said at a campaign event in Burlington when challenged by a voter over his desire to be commander-in-chief.

“But I think I’d make a good president,” Thompson continued. “I have the background, capability, and concern to do this and I’m doing it for the right reasons.” […]

“I am not consumed by personal ambition,” Thompson also said Saturday. “I’m offering myself up…. I’m only consumed by a few things and politics is not one of them.”

I’ve seen quite a few reactions that Thompson’s candid remarks are a good thing. Overly-ambitious candidates consumed with political gain are somehow unseemly, the theory goes, so Thompson is a breath of fresh air — he wants to be president, but he has no taste for the silly, often demoralizing process.

I’m just not so sure this is a plus.

To be sure, I can respect the fact that Thompson doesn’t enjoy the grueling campaign; one assumes other candidates would say the same thing.

But at the same time, isn’t there something to be said for a candidate having a “fire in the belly”? Excessive ambition can be unbecoming, but is there really something wrong with a leader stepping up and working hard to make his or her case to voters?

In other words, shouldn’t someone who wants to be president be prepared to run for president with a certain … gusto? Given the current challenges the next president will face, maybe some passion for moving the nation forward might not be such a bad idea.

Michael Crowley, reporting from Iowa before Thompson’s comments yesterday, noted:

[W]hy did he flop so badly once he did run? Where to start? He got in too late, didn’t sound prepared, lacked the movie-star presence people expected, and suffered from staff turmoil (widely attributed to Jeri). Above all, Thompson never offered a clear rationale for his candidacy — a curious defect for a star contender, unless you consider what’s become increasingly clear of late: On some level, the guy never really seemed to want it.

Proclaiming, “I’m not particularly interested in running for president” a few days before the Iowa caucuses probably won’t help seal the deal.

Thompson would probably make a tolerable president if there didn’t happen to be anything really going on in the country at the time.

Not being “consumed by personal ambition” is actually a pretty noble sentiment, but that doesn’t mean that he should act like he doesn’t believe in himself.

  • “there really something wrong with a leader stepping up and working hard to make his or her case to voters?”

    The problem is that our campaigns present a poor situation of making one’s case to the voters. If the campaign was one of meaningful debate and a real discussion of the issues it would be one thing. Instead it is a matter of repeatedly making the same simplistic stump speeches over and over and seeing how many hands a candidate can shake.

    Under the situation I am not at all bothered by a candidate who has little interest in this. I don’t support Thompson for president, but it has nothing to do with this statement.

  • mike royko once said he supported adlai stevenson III (another famously laid-back and diffident campaigner) because he was ready for a “candidate that makes my blood run tepid.”

    on the other hand, wasn’t it moses mamomiedes (sp?) who said, “if i am not for me, who will be?”?

  • Thompson is advantaged by remaining a blank slate. Each of the other Republican candidates has managed to alienate one or more of the factions that make up the Republican base. By standing for nothing beyond a few platitudes Thompson allows all of those frustrated Republicans to convince themselves that he’ll be their guy. He’s the quintessential “None of the Above” and in the sorry Republican field that may leave him standing after the others run aground on the rocks of their own self-contradictions.

  • The American presidency may have become a variation on an old cliche: those who are best qualified to fill the office are too principled or too smart to run in the kind of ugly marathon of a campaign that is required to become elected.

    Sometimes I think we would be better off with a parliamentary system of government like most of the world’s other democracies have. George W. Bush wouldn’t have been elected prime minister of even the most ridiculous banana republic.

    Then I look at Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and think maybe I’m wrong.

  • Cincinnatus Fred ain’t. It’s one thing for a reluctant, but eminently qualified, candidate to be pressed into service on behalf of a grateful nation (George Washington being another example), but it’s quite another for an unmotivated man to be driven back into politics by what appears to be an overzealous wife. The last thing this nation needs is a new president bent on breaking George W. Bush’s record for taking vacations or to be even more apathetic when a crisis like Katrina comes up. Fred should stick to playing powerful men on TV. We’ve already seen what intellectual and corporeal laziness does to this country with our current president.

  • As Billy Wilder once said to me in counseling how to achieve success in my particular swamp: “If you don’t believe in yourself and what you’re doing, why would you expect anyone else to?”

    Pretty much says it all for the Fredster. His pole-dancer trophy wife is more in love with being First Lady than he is with being President.

    He should’ve stuck with Arthur Branch, even if L&O has tanked.

  • What’s the saying? A people get the government they deserve? If a person who thinks he’s a great American, like Thompson, doesn’t think it’s worth it for him to be uncomfortable for a while so we can have (he thinks) a great president, maybe that exaplains a lot about our country and why we don’t get a lot of great things. I’ve certainly met a whole lot of liberals who think they have it all figured out, but who apparently are content to do nothing and let out country get wrested away just because a few couch-potato conservatives all of a sudden started talking tough every once in a while and crazily stroking their George Custer moustaches.

  • Well, I think this will all work out quite well – Fred’s not really interested in running for president, and I think most of the country isn’t interested in him being president.

    Win-win.

  • an unmotivated man to be driven back into politics by what appears to be an overzealous wife

    What is it about fake boobs that makes women become so acquisitive and ambitious?

    🙂

  • Not being power-hungry can certainly be a good thing. But not being power-hungry does not have to translate into not being willing to work hard.

    Freddie’s problem is that he is not willing to work hard enough at the job he’s applied for and accepted (which is currently “candidate”). That’s a totally different matter from not lusting for power.

    And it certainly raises the question whether he’s willing to work hard enough at the job he’s auditioning for (president).

    Unlike Ron Chusid in #2, I don’t see the stupid drudgery of campaigning as any kind of excuse. That’s what it takes. You know that going in. If you’re not prepared to do it, you’re a fool for running.

    The problem is not that “that our campaigns present a poor situation of making one’s case to the voters.” The problem is that Freddie is not willing to work as hard as he needs to. The reason why hardly matters.

  • Not being “consumed by personal ambition” is actually a pretty noble sentiment (Episty @1)

    There is a lot of this “mixed reaction” in the comments – people appear to agree with Fred to some degree, but it makes them no more likely to support Fred.

    But I think this actually gives Fred way too much credit. One can have person ambition, in the sense of a desire, yet be too lazy to make it happen. When I read all of Fred’s remarks, I don’t see anything noble at all. What I see is a set of comments that translates, roughly, as:

    I shouldn’t have to make my case, my perfection for the task should be self-evident, and if you all don’t accept my generous offer to suspend my lucrative career as a character actor and be your semi-benevolent semi-dictator, well screw you.

    And I think that is how many voters will take it, and Fred has now sealed the deal – he has no chance (not that he had a snowballs chance in the first place).

  • Well there’s also the fact that Thompson is as dumb as a post, a fact that becomes increasingly clear every time he opens his mouth. And I tend to think that may be more of an issue even for Republicans than it would have been a few years ago.

  • Still, I’ve read the claim in comments here at least two or three times before that Fred Thompson’s wife is making him run, but I haven’t seen the evidence for it. Why can’t it be that a few of his buddies just told him they thought he could win, and he didn’t realize how tough it was going to be before he got started (or he knew but he was too irresponsible to care, or whatever)?

    I know it can be beneficial to try to peer behind the scenes by speculating a little bit, but I just don’t see the ‘Fred Thompson’s wife is really Fred Thomspson’ thing going on here.

  • I think this would have been a positive a decade ago. Now, after 7 years of a President who would rather ride his bike than work, we can’t really afford another President who has no interest in doing the job.

  • This is just an ad hominem attack by Fred Thompson against the other candidates. He would portray himself as above the fray, called to action, but he is as much a political being as any of the other candidates. His coy attack has yielded what could be a very damaging soundbite. I’ve read more than one headline which imply that Fred Thompson is dropping out of the race.

  • Man, those grapes are sour.

    He knows he doesn’t have a chance in hell so he’s getting in a preemptive “So whut?”

  • I’ll bet Fred is smart enough to realize that in the highly unlikely event that he did win he would in all liklihood be forced to work with a heavily Democratic congress, and that simply wouldn’t be much fun for a guy who likes to play dictators on TV. He can probably hear his trophy wife shrieking now, “I don’t want to hear it!!! What are you, afraid of an old woman??? Just go kick Nancy Pelosi’s ass, you pussy!!!!”

    Lazy Fred wants this to be over so he can go back to shmoozing for big bucks and cruising on his hollywood credentials. Just a hunch, but I’ll bet he’s planning to dump his wife after it’s over too.

  • I like Fred, and I like John McCain. I get emails from both. The difference is that McCain has prepared all his life to serve as Commander-in-Chief. He has been tested, and he is ready. I would like these two to put their heads together, and chart a course that is really best for America. We need a stronger military, but we won’t be secure until our border/illegal immigrant problem is permanently solved. Our schools have high drop-out rates, in part, because illegal immigrant children don’t get enough “catch-up-to grade-level” immersion (including language training) training to earn a high school diploma. Too many kids drop-out. As drop-outs/outcasts, many join gangs, which prey on the younger kids, citizens and non-citizens. It is a vicous cycle of dispair. Some never learn the difference between right and wrong. To many parents are imprisoned, and their kids roam the neighborhoods looking for opportunity, be it drugs, auto-theft, prostitution, robbery, etc. Our candidates for President need to address these issues, along with a host of other problems, such as medical care for the elderly, underfunded Social Security, a mess with Medicare and Medicade… I could go on and on. Ask yourself, who will protect you when a foreign power lands in our cities such as Boston, New York, San Francisco, Long Beach,… only a strong military.

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  • I don’t know how Fred thinks he has the background and capability to be President, unless he thinks that time he spent doing Hunt for Red October counts, somehow. So, if he doesn’t even really want the job, couldn’t he just go home now?

    I mean, I don’t really want to be President, but I could do a better job than he could. Does that mean I should be running?

  • semi OT (unless one takes the topic to be “caucuses”)

    the update live from Downtown Des Moines, Ground Zero for all things caucus (yesterday we had 10 candidates spread around Iowas 99 counties). it appears today is “bus your grassroots supporters around in campy-looking buses” day – coming into town I followed an old school bus converted to the red, white and blue “Constitution Coach,” for Ron Paul (prominently noted on the back: “This bus paid for by Grassroots Volunteers for Ron Paul!”) i later went to get some lunch and at the exit from my ramp was a strangely similar Mike Huckabee bus, but with ugly bunting.

    when Paul had his $6 mil day, one thing he did with the cash was buy more Des Moines office space – he added on the empty space that had been between his office and Huckabee’s office, so they now have a shared wall. today, in what surely is a waste of energy (hey, what should we do with those volunteers who have absolutely no skills but also no shame?) the two campaigns are having a sign war on the corner outside of their offices – two frozen supporters staggering with 6-foot signs for their candidate, stepping back and forth in front of each other like some bizarre dance routine.

    on the way to lunch and back i counted — almost exactly half of all license plates downtown are out of state. at the fun and relaxing Brenton Skating Plaza (our ice rink is 1-square-foot larger than the rink at Rockafeller Plaza!), poor “average citizens” are being accosted as they leave by a young female reporter and her cameraman. Cameras and sat feed trucks are also set up atop the best sledding hill in town, next to the Iowa Supreme Court building. . . and just about everywhere else you look, too.

    tomorrow i am lunching with a friend from DC at one of the spots all of the media are apparently hanging out; i’ll let you know what i overhear. locals are modestly annoyed that all of the best New Years Eve dinner reservations have been taken by out-of-staters, mainly media on expense accounts from NY and DC.

  • semi OT (unless one takes the topic to be “caucuses”)

    When referring to the GOP’s 2008 effort the appropriate word is “carcasses.”

    Sorry.

    Thanks for the update and don’t forget to wear your Republicans for Voldemort t-shirt!

  • What bullshit. Thompson is a phony whose only policy seems to be smearing dmocrats. He has no plans and an attitude that “hell, if you can’t find anybody else I might as well be president…I’m good enough”. The ego of these people is amazing. Thousands are ahead of him for “making good presidents”. He wouldn’t even be in this race were it not for the desperation of the GOP. Some groups apparently thought they could make some money off him. Just pathetic. Trying to attribute some kind of good character to this ego maniac phony is just pathetic. This IS his character, treating the presidential race like star search.

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  • Apparently “not consumed by ambition” is now interchangeable with “lazy”. Fred is interested in the presidency only so long as it offers plenty of parties during the run-up – including rapt audiences who hang on his every word – followed by four years of basically kickin’ back on the White House porch with a glass of corn likker and branch water.

    This is what happens when you get shoved into a competition based on little but how you smell. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you; don’t carry an opened packet of Bourkum Riff around in your pocket (at least during Fox interviews) unless you’re prepared to go the distance.

  • ArmyVet in 22:

    Ask yourself, who will protect you when a foreign power lands in our cities such as Boston, New York, San Francisco, Long Beach,… only a strong military.

    When a foreign power lands in our cities, I think at that point we already know we don’t have a strong military.

  • thompson lost interest when an advisor told him he couldn’t get elected by carrying Tennessee alone.

  • I don’t have any problem with a competent candidate who eschews the political process, but…they have to be competent. Thompson clearly doesn’t fit that description. Instead, he comes off as a lazy ass who imagines that he can just have the presidency handed to him.

  • With apologies to a certain Mr. Lincoln, the citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the veterans of the greatest land bettle ever fought on this side of the Atlantic Ocean….

    The Des Moines Address
    by UnAware Fred

    “Four score and seven days ago—proving that my mathematical skills are even worse than Karl Rove’s—my trophy wife brought forth on this chrome-dome of mine, a ridiculous idea, conceived in Lust for more air-time with Fox News, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—just so long as they are the Right kind of Republican, the right kind of Christian, and the right kind of race and gender.

    Now I am engaged in a great political war, testing whether that Lust, or any Lust so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. I am in in a great caucus of that war. I have come to ridicule and debase myself on a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those beliefs that I ever really wanted the crummy job of being your President in the first place. It is altogether beyond stupidity, and fitting of my penchant for being totally unaware of the facts that I should do this.

    But, in a larger sense, I can not dedicate—I can not consecrate—I can not hallow—this ground. The other candidates, Democrat, Republican, Mormon, Neo-Fascist, Sicilian Mafia-ist, and Martian-chasing, who struggle here, have consecrated it, far above my completely nonexistent power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what I say here, but it can never forget what they do here. It is for the intellectually capable, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which I have thus far so nobly ignored, denigrated, insulted, polluted, and otherwise f***ed up beyond all imagination. It is rather for me to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before —based on the threat from my trophy wife that I will never get laid again—that I here highly resolve that I have not pretended to run for President in vain—that my acting career, under the almighty dollar and the profitable glare reflecting off of Rupert Murdoch’s greasy nose-bridge, shall have a new birth of rambling incoherently—and that stupid things done of me, by me, for me, shall not perish from the realm of long-term syndicated reruns and frequent appearances on the Rush Limbaugh radio show.

  • It’s so ridiculous that we’re all reading about how lazy this guy is and writing comments about it.

    I can’t wait until Iowa settles some things.

  • We already have a president who’s so bored with the job he couldn’t be bothered to read 1 page reports warning of an imminent attack on the U.S.

    Does anybody really want another one?

  • shalimar: “Now, after 7 years of a President who would rather ride his bike than work,…”

    look at it this way — while bush is out riding he ain’t fucking anything up.

  • What the hell is wrong with you people? Who really wants this awful job? A job that pays a lousy $28/hr! With the exception of Bill Clinton, I can’t recall a single President who has ever said how much they loved the job. What I admire is a man willing to DO the job.

    I’m looking for a leader! If all you want is a cheerleader you have plenty to choose from and if that is what we get God help us.

  • If Thompson appears uninterested, imagine how the nation itself appears. These are republicans, for crying out loud! The republican party has long since been rendered meaningless and their decisions are moot. Why on earth would Thompson care anymore about the republican nomination than anyone else?

  • Fred Thompson: a leader?

    Come on. Turn off the movies he’s been in and watch the man himself. Does he strike you as wanting anything other than a nap?

    Besides, $28 an hour is a sight better than what I make right now in the Air Force. Just sayin’.

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