You may recall George Will introduced Giuliani at the CPAC conference earlier this year--a fact which Will did not disclose in his Newsweek column.
Of Tulips and Fred Thompson
by George Will
Of Tulips and Fred Thompson
Last Word
Is Fred Thompson All Charm, No Substance?
By George F. Will
Newsweek
June 18, 2007 issue - Tulip mania gripped Holland in the 1630s. Prices soared, speculation raged, bulbs promising especially exotic or intense colors became the objects of such frenzied bidding that some changed hands 10 times in a day. Then, suddenly, the spell was broken, the market crashed—prices plummeted in some cases to one one-hundredth of what they had been just days before. And when Reason was restored to her throne, no one could explain what the excitement had been about. Speaking of Fred Thompson ...
Some say he is the Republicans' Rorschach test: They all see in him what they crave. Or he might be the Republicans' dot-com bubble, the result of restless political investors seeking value that the untutored eye might not discern and that might be difficult to quantify but which the investors are sure must be there, somewhere, somehow.
One does not want to be unfair to Thompson, who may have hidden depths. But ask yourself this: If he did not look like a basset hound who had just read a sad story—say, "Old Yeller"—and if he did not talk like central casting's idea of the god Sincerity, would anyone think he ought to be entrusted with the nation's nuclear arsenal? He is an actor, and, as a Hollywood axiom says, the key to acting is sincerity—if you can fake that, you've got it made. This is, of course, all about another actor. Republicans have scrutinized the current crop of presidential candidates and succumbed to the psychosomatic disease Reagan Deprivation. It is, however, odd that many Republicans who advertise their admiration for Reagan are so ready to describe Thompson as Reaganesque because he ... what?
Because he, too, is a Great Communicator? Reagan greatly communicated ideas and agendas. What Thompson enthusiasts are smitten by, so far, is his manner. His deep-fried Southernness bears a strong resemblance to the Southwesternness of, say, Midland, Texas, and the country may have had its fill of that flavor. Thompson, a longtime lawyer-lobbyist who will run as a Washington "outsider," lives inside the Beltway, but outside Washington, in McLean, Va.
In their haste to anoint Thompson as another Reagan, the anointers are on the verge of endorsing what Reagan's disdainers have long argued—that Reagan was 99 percent charm and 1 percent substance. In 1968, when Reagan was 57, one of his disparagers, Norman Mailer, wrote that Reagan radiated a "very young, boyish, maybe thirteen or fourteen, freckles, cowlick, I-tripped-on-my-sneaker-lace aw shucks variety of confusion." This style of dismissal was common then, before Reagan spent another 14 successful years in demanding executive offices and before the publication of his letters and pre-presidential broadcasts. Since then, Reagan has undergone what Alistair Cooke, speaking of someone else, called "the four stages of the highbrow treatment: first, he was derided, then ignored, then accepted, then discovered." So far, Thompson is 99 percent charm.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19140623/site/newsweek/page/0/
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