Thompson on FNS

I caught Fred Thompson on Fox News Sunday while I was at the gym this morning (nice facilities here at my bro's apartment complex, BTW; I'm jealous). Thompson did pretty good, but I don't think it got him any more votes than he already had, in Iowa at least. It was too generic, too same-ol' same-ol'. (This re-cap and summary is based on memory alone at the moment, I'll post video as soon as I find some.)

As per his usual, Thompson was unfailingly polite, declining to bad-mouth the other Republican candidates. He even backed off of Wallace's question asking if Huckabee were unfit to be president. I can't tell what Thompson's strategy is here. Sometimes he's all about pushing on his opponents. Today, he was just the genial, gracious Southerner.

He also managed to stop himself from accusing FOXNews of an institutional bias against him, even after Wallace opened with this quote from yesterday, that will surely frustrate his web supporters:

"I like to say that I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them. The welfare of my country and my kids and grandkids are one of them. But if people really want in their president a super type-A personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night thinking about for years how they could achieve the presidency of the United States, someone who could look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning — I ain't that guy."

"Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly," he said. "I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly."

His other major weak moment was when Wallace discussed the recent Iowa polls with him, using RCP's averages. Thompson applied a generous amount of gloss, claiming a third-place spot by nature of a flawed poll RCP included in the average. No mention was made of the private poll of 15,000 likely Republican caucus goers that puts Thompson at 1%, behind Ron Paul.

In all, I suspect that FOX did Thompson a favor by making him the last candidate to be on FNS before the Iowa caucus. Unfortunately, I don't think Thompson took best advantage of it.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 11:38 AM

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