Fred Thompson is off to a sluggish start. Perhaps he's being overly managed - with too many advisers giving too many prescriptions.

It's time to restore the balance of Fred's mind, body, and spirit ... to right the flow of Fred's chi... It's all about good energy... Watch and learn ...

Two weeks ago I was being fitted for a double-breasted midnight blue tuxedo at Paul Stuart, my haberdashery of choice. That's when the subject first came up:

"I like Fred Thompson," said David Rein, the sartorial svengali from whom I've bought all my suits over the last ten years. "But I think he's a little ... worn out."

"Worn out?" I asked. I was a bit distracted looking at myself in the mirror. I'd never seriously considered a double-breasted suit. In fact I looked great. (Pictures later.)

David lowered his voice. Paul Stuart is a dignified established.

"What I mean," David said, "is that I think his wife is very demanding."

Much has been made of Fred Thompson's "trophy wife," the very attractive Jeri Kehn Thompson. The 40 year old blonde - 24 years her husband's junior - is not only a stunner, but whip-smart to boot.

(The "Trophy Wife" as originally defined in a 1989 edition of Fortune, by a woman writer, was not a dingbat. She was young, ambitious, attractive of course, but also accomplished. And her rejuvenating powers are legendary: King David had Bathsheba. Napoleon had Marie Louise of Austria. Trump had Marla Maples.)

But while Jeri, a former RNC spokewoman, might prove invaluable to her husband's political drive, it must be asked: is her own sex drive taking its toll? From the looks of it, the candidate may be suffering from sexual exhaustion.


Thompson's health of course is not perfect. He has suffered from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. But happily it's in remission and reportedly indolent, the lowest of three grades of NHL.

Instead, what we see in the video - the fatigue, the shakiness, the disorientation - are likely the ravages of Jeri's sexual tyranny.

What do you think? Should Jeri step down from her role as bedroom Commander-in-Chief? Should she stop abusing her power? Or is she a patriot, doing the electorate a favor by testing his stamina?

By the way, speaking of men's clothing, Romney's the only one of these guys who knows what he's doing. The rest of them look like crap.

So far this campaign season, Fred Thompson has gotten ahead by standing off to the side. The other racers get tired, they get beaten up by the road, and he doesn't. That all ends tomorrow night in Dearborn, Michigan, when Thompson joins the Republican field for the first time. (According to news reports, during his rehearsals, former New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato has played Rudy Giuliani. Doesn't Thompson know better actors from his time around sets?) Playing catch-up may well work to Thompson's advantage, since no clear and unproblematic frontrunner has emerged. Of course, there's also a chance that he will be derided by the other candidates as a Johnny come lately.

Here's a little something I wrote last May for this blog. Wow, to think Fred Thompson's been playing presidential footsie with us for that long. What a tease. Anyway here goes...

**

"You're you in every role you play." So said Katharine Hepburn. (At least I think she did. I can't find any citation for it through Google, but trust me. It's certainly something she would have said.) Simply put, the actor isn't so different from the role he/she plays.

Fred Thompson's camp would surely take this to heart. They know that American voters are greatly influenced by the public performance aspects of the presidency: Bush atop the rubble at Ground Zero was Oscar - and reelection - worthy. (Bush with the Mission Accomplished banner won an Oscar that was later revoked.)

My bet is Thompson will welcome voters equating him with the guy they see on the big and small screen. But what does Thompson's list of credits tell us about the man?


Most importantly, he's comfortable in the Commander-in-Chief role, having played Presidents Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant. Jackson was a strong president. That's good. But Grant was a colossal failure as president. Thompson's comfort in the role is troubling.

Thompson played Jay Sarno, creator of Caesar's Place and Circus Circus in Las Vegas, in the TV movie "Evel Knievel." Sarno was a shrewd businessman - the mastermind behind Vegas' transformation into a family entertainment center. (Both big business and heartland conservatives have something to cheer about here.) But there was a dark side to Sarno. Do we really want a president who can easily channel a gambler and rumored mafioso?

Something we did last July - when Fred Thompson was in the second callback stage of his audition for presidential candidate. (It's been a long process.):

Yes, Fred Thompson was a lawyer and politician before he was an actor. But his experience as an actor is no doubt an important factor in his viability as a presidential candidate. For Head of State - the man (or woman?) behind the bully pulpit - we want someone who can act the role of President: Grave at times of crisis, with a light touch at others, and always dignified. It's a role that requires a fairly wide range.

Taking politics out of it, which actor (or actress?) do you think would make a good President?

The flood of responses to our investigative piece on guys who pee sitting down has been overwhelming. I expected a tiny trickle of comments. Instead I got a tidal wave. Obviously you'd all been holding it in for so long, you were ready to burst!

At the end of this post is a political poll question. But first, a recap on the excellent comments. I was particularly intrigued by the number of women who said they were relieved that their husbands sit down. Some only came to this realization belatedly:


Of course a few women are strict traditionalists:

Yesterday, I analyzed the Democratic presidential race in light of the latest polls. Today, I take a look at the Republican side of things.

Let's consider four new polls. A Rasmussen poll has Republicans divided as follows: Fred Thompson 28 percent; Rudy Giuliani 27 percent; John McCain 10 percent; Mitt Romney 10 percent. A Gallup Poll has it Giuliani 28, Thompson 19, McCain 18, Romney 7. A Cook/RT Strategies poll has it Giuliani 20, McCain 16, Thompson 15, Romney 7. Finally, a Mason-Dixon poll of likely voters in the Republican primary in South Carolina produced this result for that state: Thomson 25, Giuliani 21, Romney 11, McCain 7.

These polls suggest, first , that McCain is in big trouble. Once considered the frontrunner, he is now in third place, with his national support probably somewhere in the mid-teens. One of the candidates he's trailing hasn't even entered the race, and thus has run no ads and appeared in no debates. The South Carolina number, which may well be indicative of the rest of the south, must also be causing dread in the McCain camp. A month ago, polls showed him with at least twice that level of support in that state. It's pretty clear what has happened. Though some liberal critics mindlessly accused McCain of pandering to the conservative base this year, in truth McCain has been doing virtually no pandering, with immigration reform being the latest example and probably the last straw.

How dare he?!!! Joe Scarborough mentioned a pole! I am aghast. Do people live in the same country I do? Is this the same country where Paris and Britney and Lindsay go around without their underwear on?

We have some sort of bizarre double standard in this country where some people are allowed to do anything and everything, and others aren't allowed to say anything that might be even vaguely offensive.

As you can see from the video above, all Scarborough says is, "You think she works the pole?" Because of this "outrage," conservative and liberal bloggers (his Imus moment?) have skewered him (can I say that?). Given that earlier in the show he was talking about an exercise routine involving a stripper's pole, he is clearly referring to that and not anything more salacious.

A reference to a stripper's pole is so innocuous compared to most things we see in the media today. Has anyone ever gone on the internet? Do these critics have any idea what our real "community standards" are these days?

Also, how is this sexist? Am I not allowed to talk about strippers on the air anymore because it might offend women? They exist whether we talk about them or not. Their very existence is not some sort of sexist plot by a male dominated society. They exist because men and women are attracted to one another.

Some critics seem to be touchy because the comment is about a specific person, a candidate's wife! So what? Yes, Fred Thompson's wife is younger and attractive. Good for her and definitely good for him. The wife of Democratic presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinich is also hot. If you ask me, Mrs. McCain is kind of a looker, too. And Laura is not so bad, either.

I enjoyed Mo Rocca's post recapping Fred Thompson's acting career. He's clearly had some juicy roles. Having attended a dinner with Thompson on Tuesday (hosted by The American Spectator), I can add that Thompson does a good "star turn" as himself.

The dinner discussion was off-the-record, but here's an account of my general impressions. And here's an account by Robert Novak, who has been watching them come and go for 50 years. If you read both carefully, I think you'll find the assessments to be similar.

There's little doubt now that Fred Thompson is seriously considering a run for the presidency. What would be the impact of such a run on the Republican side of the race?

First, Thompson's entry would likely be the a huge blow for candidates like Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback who are attempting to fill the hole left by George Allen's demise. With Rudy Giuliani and John McCain out in front, and other conservative sidelined for various reasons, there's clearly a niche for a traditional conservative candidate. But Romney and Brownback have not yet filled it, which is probably why we see the Thompson boomlet. His candidacy would end Brownback's hopes and make Romney's position quite precarious. It would probably also end speculation about a Newt Gingrich candidacy.

Fred Thompson, formerly a Republican Senator from Tennessee, may enter the Presidential race as a Republican. As a politician, he may not be much more well-known than Mitt Romney, although his positions are generally conservative-pro-life, anti-gay marriage, against gun control. But that doesn't matter quite so much, since he's been a nationally recognized actor for two decades. He has appeared on various Law & Order shows (as District Attorney Arthur Branch), in dramas like The Hunt for Red October (as Rear Admiral Joshua Painter), and in comedies like Albert Brooks's Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (where he played himself, heading up a Congressional committee looking into the political uses of humor). He has been an FBI agent, the CIA director, an arms dealer, and even the White House Chief of Staff (in In the Line of Fire, from 1993).

But perhaps Thompson's strangest appearance is Last Best Chance, a 45-minute film from 2005 produced with support from the Nuclear Threat Initiative that worries over the danger posed by stray nuclear materials that might fall under the control of terrorists. In the film, real-life politicians like Sam Nunn and Dick Lugar play themselves, and Thompson plays the President, who is named Charles Ross.

Will Thompson's acting career help or hurt his presidential aspirations, should he decide to run? Is it beneficial to him to have dozens of hours of footage out there in which he plays presidents, senators, and politicians? Will that give voters pause? Does it not matter at all? Why, given his conservative positions, is someone like James Dobson maligning his candidacy by saying that Thompson, as far as he can tell, is not a Christian? And if he gets into the race, which of the other candidates will go up and which will go down? Thus far, most of the drama has been on the Democratic side of the race, with Obama's climb and Edwards's personal crisis. Will this shift some of coverage back to the Republican battle?

Well, I'm not suggesting we send Ed Asner to the White House. Or Susan Sarandon. But Fred Thompson should not be dismissed from serious consideration because his main career prior to politics was in Hollywood. We can think of another fellow who played "Bedtime for Bonzo" and other such films only to serve two successful terms as governor of California and then two even-more-successful terms as president of the United States. Reagan, along with Franklin Roosevelt, will probably go down in history as one of the two great presidents of the twentieth century. Not bad for a B movie actor.

Reagan's success wasn't despite his thespian background, it was because of it. The presidency is a kind of role. Leaders must appear to embody a nation's aspirations, and project to the people an image of what the country stands for. Bush's problem is that he's a terrible actor. He never stops being himself. He is almost exasperatingly sincere, while good actors convey sincerity even in the midst of Machiavellian operations. Bush often does the right thing, but he doesn't explain why he is doing it. He has not made the moral case for America either to Americans or to the rest of the world. This is part of the reason why Americans are losing confidence in the war on terror, and why America has found so few allies abroad. The next president is going to realize that deeds must be backed up by words. The curtain is coming down on Bush. Will it rise again on President Thompson? He's a long shot right now for the starring role, but let's see how the auditions go.