David Holden is a savvy guy. He doesn’t consider himself a political junkie, but he has been closely following the presidential campaign as it unfolds around him. Holden runs Hair Biz, a salon at 4 N. Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton’s campaign office is two blocks up, and his location, as luck would have it, puts him just a few doors down from John Edwards’s headquarters.
Hair salon . . . John Edwards . . . Did I mention that Holden is a savvy guy?
In June, Holden challenged 2008 presidential candidates to come to Hair Biz for a $400 haircut. The money would go towards research on autism–Holden’s adopted son Costica suffers from the developmental disability.
I met Holden at his shop earlier this month as I chased a rumor that John McCain might show up for a trim. The rumors were unfounded, and McCain had his hair cut down the street for $16. Not one of the candidates has taken Holden up on the challenge. Still, he hasn’t given up hope.
“I hear that Fred Thomas is getting in.”
Fred Thomas. Fred Thompson. It doesn’t matter, as long as he shows up for a haircut.
Even before he announced his candidacy September 5 on The Tonight Show, the Washington press corps was deeply skeptical about a Thompson run. The emerging conventional wisdom was that voters would judge harshly the turmoil and turnover that marked his pre-campaign efforts and that such trouble–a sure sign of more to come–would cripple his campaign. It was an understandable conclusion. After all, reporters in Washington had spent months covering Thompson’s staff changes and fundraising woes. There had been real problems with his early efforts.
But many voters, even the ones who live amidst the everyday swirl of early primary politicking, simply aren’t paying much attention. A national Rasmussen poll conducted last week found that 56 percent of likely voters believe that the 2008 campaign has thus far been “annoying and a waste of time.” And 72 percent would support measures to limit campaigning to the calendar year before Election Day.
Thompson has gotten additional media scrutiny since he announced, and the national press coverage of his first three weeks as a candidate has been even more negative than it was during what he calls “the preseason.” George Will called the entry a “belly flop.” New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote: “When it comes to overhyped underperformers, Fred Thompson’s entry into the presidential race was right up there with Britney Spears at the MTV awards.” Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post complained: “Thompson’s dialogue so far consists of folksy platitudes and broad pronouncements, unobjectionable yet unenlightening.”
Thompson has been criticized for his choice of footwear, for losing too much weight, and for his lack of enthusiasm about meeting the Butter Princess at the Iowa State Fair. He has been chided for his failure to offer specifics on his plans for entitlement reform, the alternative minimum tax, and Iraq.
“I get the sense from the national press corps that our announcement tour would have been a failure unless Fred walked on water onto the stage where he levitated 10 feet in the air doing somersaults while delivering his remarks without notes,” says Todd Harris, the campaign’s communications director.
What explains this hostility? One factor is almost certainly Thompson’s decision to work around–not through–the mainstream media in Washington. He first hinted at his candidacy in an interview with the Fox News Channel. He spent time with reporters from THE WEEKLY STANDARD and National Review. He posted commentaries on conservative blogs and brief video editorials on his own website. Nothing generates hostility from reporters so much as ignoring or dismissing them. Just ask Dick Cheney.
But some of the criticisms are valid, and they do not come only from the national media. Lee Bandy, the influential columnist at the State in Columbia, South Carolina, wrote that Thompson’s debut “wasn’t very impressive” and that his upcoming debate performances could reveal that he is “not ready for prime time.”
Even some Thompson supporters worry that his speeches lack focus and strike audiences as rhetorical wandering. And they are concerned that his long layoff from active campaigning and his late entry will mean that reporters will harp on him, playing his knock-the-dust-off stumbles as major campaign gaffes.
This week, Thompson intends to sharpen the differences he has with two of his rivals–Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani–by asking a simple question: Where were you during the 1994 Republican Revolution? Thompson, who first won election to the Senate that year, will portray himself as a “consistent conservative” who supported the small-government principles of the Contract With America then and supports them today. The obvious conclusion: While Thompson was campaigning as a proud conservative in Tennessee, Romney was running for the Senate in Massachusetts as a liberal Republican who distanced himself from Reaganomics. Giuliani was endorsing the Democratic governor of New York and liberal icon Mario Cuomo for reelection.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Thompson campaign so far is this: Despite his late entry, poor fundraising, and staff disorder, and despite the negative press, the former Tennessee senator, three weeks into his campaign, must be considered not only a top-tier candidate but almost a co-frontrunner for the Republican nomination. The Rasmussen poll at the end of last week actually found him tied with Giuliani; the most recent Gallup poll gives Giuliani an 8-point lead, Reuters/Zogby has Giuliani up 2, and CNN has the former mayor up one.
Call it a nice Fred Thomas post-announcement bump.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
