On March 11, Fred Thompson told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that he was giving “serious consideration” to joining the race for president. Within a month he had made his decision: He would run.
Almost immediately, he was a first-tier candidate. News stories noted the intriguing new prospect, previously unenthusiastic Republican activists seemed invigorated, polling by news outlets and rival candidates showed Thompson as one of the top three Republicans. And he had not yet entered the contest. Times were good. So good, in fact, that Thompson joked about delaying any announcement indefinitely.
“I told somebody the other day: I can’t afford to announce. I’m doing too well.”
Now, after a series of well-publicized missteps and months of being subject to media scrutiny usually reserved for announced candidates, the opposite seems to be true: Thompson can’t afford not to announce.
Although he had many friends and supporters encouraging him to join the race last spring, Thompson opted instead to form a “testing-the-waters” committee that enabled him to raise money and begin putting together a campaign operation. But Thompson’s noncampaign has been marked by lackluster fundraising and personnel issues more characteristic of the final days of a losing campaign than the first days of a winning effort. Thompson hired veteran Washington hand Tom Collamore to serve as his campaign manager and fired him a short time later. The top communications staffer was brought on and dismissed in similar fashion, and another press officer left, too. An early effort to raise $5 million in June came up short, and in an interview last week with the Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, Thompson acknowledged that the numbers from the summer would not impress. “I imagine we will fall off some in July and August and have a great September,” he said.
There have been other difficulties. Thompson’s team mishandled reports that he had lobbied for an abortion rights group in the early 1990s, strongly denying the story at first only to allow later that he didn’t remember the details of those interactions. He told a tax reform group on videotape that he would “absolutely” sign legislation replacing the income tax with a consumption tax, but later said his answer was misunderstood.
Does any of this matter? Several Thompson supporters believe he made a mistake by waiting to join the race. They worry that his wink-and-a-nod candidacy has undermined his main strength: his ability to present himself as a plainspoken, no–nonsense conservative. What’s more, they say, Thompson’s refusal to actively campaign reinforces what rival campaigns have suggested is Thompson’s chief weakness: laziness.
Others dismiss such second-guessing as the preoccupation of a chronically impatient pundit class. Thompson has always had a date in mind, they say, and he is unapologetic about his refusal to be pressured into the race. “The media are imposing models on the Thompson campaign that just don’t fit,” says one senior Thompson adviser. “It’s still not yet a campaign. . . . Until you hit a date when the rubber hits the road, you can make mistakes. In these early days, Fred will tolerate mistakes made on his behalf and, in some cases, at his behest.”
What’s more, they say, it was not realistic for a candidate who was regularly polling second to jump in without a proper organization in place. “If you’re Mike Huckabee, you can run with three people and a cell phone. Fred Thompson can’t do that,” says a second Thompson adviser.
Despite his difficulties, Thompson continues to place second in most national polls measuring support of Republican presidential candidates. “Giuliani’s numbers haven’t gone higher, McCain is down, and Romney’s numbers are up where he’s spending lots of money,” says a third Thompson adviser.
“You’ve got to talk to people when they’re listening,” says Mary Matalin, an adviser to Thompson. “They’re not listening in August.”
Thompson hopes they’ll be listening in September. On Wednesday, September 5, shortly after his Republican rivals debate in New Hampshire, he will appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to announce that he will be launching his campaign the following day in a speech broadcast on his website, imwithfred.com. That evening, he will call in to supporters gathered at Thompson-for-president house parties across the country. Thompson will travel immediately to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina–three critical early primary states. The second leg of the launch tour will include several stops in Florida, which Thompson strategists have long viewed as critical to their bid to win the Republican nomination. He will finish his initial campaign foray with a visit to his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., on Saturday, September 15.
His message is likely to be a blend of traditional conservative campaign rhetoric–on abortion, taxes, and immigration–and blunt talk about the big issues facing the country. Although Thompson will focus on three–the war on terror, entitlement reform, and tax cuts–campaign officials insist he will also spend a good deal of his time talking about issues that matter to social conservatives.
All of this means one thing: Thompson wants to position himself as the only viable conservative alternative to Rudy Giuliani. In conversations with several Thompson strategists over the past week, one phrase was repeated nearly a dozen times: consistent conservative. It is a not-so-subtle reminder, they say, that Giuliani is not a conservative and that, while Mitt Romney may sound like a conservative now, he has not been consistent.
Thompson’s announcement will come on the eve of Congress’s debate over the direction of the Iraq war. General David Petraeus will present a progress report on the surge to Congress, starting with testimony on September 10. Thompson had been thinking of a September 17 or 18 launch, but his advisers worried that his thunder would be stolen by the debate about Iraq, so they moved it up. Now Thompson can announce his candidacy in a “news window” before that debate intensifies. He is expected to voice support for the surge (which plays well with Republican primary voters) but also acknowledge the difficulties in Iraq and criticize the White House. Indeed, other than McCain, who was calling for more troops before the war and has urged a larger U.S. military presence ever since, Thompson is perhaps the strongest proponent of the surge among Republican presidential hopefuls.
On January 11, the day after President Bush announced his plans for the surge, Thompson praised the new strategy in a commentary for ABC Radio. “I was struck by a couple of things [Bush] said that indicated not just a change in tactics but a whole new attitude with regard to what’s necessary,” Thompson said then. “He’s taking the gloves off.” Thompson, a strong supporter of the war who voted to authorize it in October 2002, ended his commentary with a soft but direct critique: “I’ll bet that a lot of folks who support the president on this are asking themselves, ‘What if we’d taken care of business this way two years ago?'”
When I interviewed him last spring, I asked Thompson if he was among that group (“Yep”), whether the surge is the last hope for a victory (“In Iraq? Probably”), and what specifically had led him to offer that criticism of the White House.
Thompson worried that the White House had waited too long to correct its mistakes on Iraq. “If we had done this three years ago, I just think we would have been in much better shape.” He faulted the Bush administration then for its failure to communicate more effectively on the war. “You cannot carry on a war for any length of time at all without the support of the American people.”
His advisers believe that Thompson’s ability to communicate will set him apart from the rest of the field. Launching his campaign in the midst of a debate over the war in Iraq will give him an opportunity to prove it.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD and author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice-President (HarperCollins).
