UPDATED:  SEP 23, 2007 

WHY FRED THOMPSON WILL WIN THE GOP NOMINATION 

How could sometimes actor, sometimes U.S. Senator, Fred Thompson win the GOP nomination for president?  He’s played many roles on television, including a tough lawyer on “Law and Order,” a Navy admiral in the movie “Hunt for Red October,” various tough guy roles in “Die Hard 2” and “In the Line of Fire”, as well as other roles on television and in the movies.  His real life background is varied.  Thompson graduated from Memphis State in 1964 and Vanderbilt Law School in 1967.  After several years as a successful Washington lobbyist for General Electric and Phillip Morris, Tennessee elected Thompson to the U.S. Senate where he served from 1994-2003.  As special Watergate counsel and Senator Howard Baker’s protégée to many Republican causes, Thompson’s real-life resume reads second to none.  Thompson has the charisma, swagger and towering frame of John Wayne, the ability to communicate almost as well as Reagan, and like Reagan, the camera just loves him.  So what?  How electable is that?  Flat out, seriously electable, it appears.  So says the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California. 

So how does the Lincoln Club figure into all this Fred Thompson for president business?  Well, let’s look at how Ronald Reagan got his start in politics.  In 1965, when Mr. Reagan, then the host of the television show “Death Valley Days,” was considering whether to enter politics, members of the Lincoln Club in Orange County, persuaded him to run for governor of California.  Billed as the largest and most active political club in America, the Lincoln Club saw in him, to be sure, an all-American boy who could speak convincingly and with feeling on subjects the ordinary man could understand.  Reagan’s moving speech, “Rendezvous with Destiny” he delivered to the 1864 Republican Convention sparked all the Lincoln Club’s greatest hope in a candidate to end all candidates.  Reagan was tall, good-looking, commanded a smooth delivery and an uncanny way with adding special meaning by inflecting key words.  Audiences believed him.  His conservative views suited the Republicans to a tee.  Acting school had paid off.   

I can see the Lincoln Club, a multi-billion-dollar instant funding bank for hand-picked Republican candidates, licking their chops.  You got to give them credit.  They went where no political group had gone before.  They bet on an actor being able to pull it off as governor and president and they were right.  And Reagan got to play the two greatest roles in his entire life.  It was brilliant.  Why not run an actor who could deliver his lines convincingly and appeal to grass roots America?  Reagan had played starring roles in 53 movies, and his face was recognizable to Americans, young and old.  And how much different could real life be from the movies?  Why not give it a go?  The Lincoln Club, composed of numerous and very wealthy California businessmen, convinced Reagan to run for governor of California.  With their support and billions, the Lincoln Club got the biggest payoff and return on their investment possible when Reagan won by a landslide.  Choosing an actor paid off.  And wasn’t it then as it is now, all about winning? 

Next came the American people.  Could an actor do justice to the office of governor of California?  It was a new shtick on conventional politics.  In his last movie, “The Killers,” a drama based upon a Hemingway short story, Reagan played the villain.  I had trouble believing that he could be an honest governor after ordering the deaths of many characters in the movie.  But in his smile and unequaled camera presence, Reagan quieted all fears that he could be anything other than the most wholesome, nicest man ever to hold public office.  So thought the American people, it seemed.  Reagan’s new and biggest role as president was even more spectacular.  “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall.”  What a great line.  It’s almost as if no one even noticed how Reagonomics wrote new rules for the Republican Party policy and conduct.  Heretofore billed as conservative, Reagan now stumped for borrowing and spending over 2 trillion dollars more than we had in the US Treasury to buildup our military and government to a larger entity than ever before.  All in the name of bringing the Evil Empire (Reagan’s new name for Russia), to its knees.   

No one noticed then that unions died a fast death when Reagan fired all the Air Traffic controllers who struck for higher wages.  In 2007 only 15% of America’s workers are union, now.  But what does this have to do with Fred Thompson?  Everything.  Reagan’s history is an essential study in order to understand this new race horse, Fred Thompson, seasoned actor and former U.S. Senator,  with the right conservative politics, who some say, could be the next Ronald Reagan.   

You can almost hear the Lincoln Club licking its chops again.  Rudy, Mitt, and McCain, look out.

On May 4, 2007, the Lincoln Club invited Fred Thompson to speak to them at their 45^th annual dinner.  The other GOP hopefuls vied to be invited, too, but no dice.  With mellow Burl Ives tones and down-home phrases that almost sounded like Hoss Cartwright waxing philosophical, Thompson’s smooth words made the Lincoln Club members think they had died and gone to Conservative Heaven.  He had credentials to spare, and he shared some humble beginnings stories, an added frosting on the cake for someone about to run for the highest office in the land.  The melodrama thickened.  He had worked his way through college and law school as a truck driver and even a shoe salesman.  How reminiscent of when Reagan told an audience that his family did not live on the wrong side of the tracks, but that the tracks were so close, you could hear the train whistles blow.  How Reaganesque Thompson must have seemed to them. 

On May 4, 2007, the Lincoln Club, was billed as the "largest and most active political club in the United States." The invitation was one that other Republican candidates had tried to secure. 

The Lincoln Club is not new on the scene.  This California political icon had strained hard to eliminate Governor Gray Davis for quite some time.  Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger.  That’s right, the Lincoln Club invited him to speak to them, too, and at the same time convinced him to run for governor of California in a special election against Gray Davis, and “poof” no more Governor Davis and hello Terminator.  Unbelievable.  But that’s only because I have trouble with it making good sense that actors or generals have the qualifications to be governors and presidents, may Adlai Stevenson rest in peace.  I need to get with the program.  I must accept that a candidate’s intellect and qualifications are secondary to Reagan or Schwarzenegger’s ability to move audiences, before the camera that loves them, even if what they stand for is nothing more than an illusion.  Remember how Schwarzenegger wowed audiences at home and on the floor of the Republican National Convention?  It did not matter what he was; the illusion was what voters wanted to believe he was.  And I think Arnold’s convention speech brought in a lot of votes for Bush in 2004, despite all those who blame Diebolt and tossed-out paper ballots by GOP election snakes. 

For years, I was agog at the pure genius of whoever pulled the strings to help Reagan rise to governor, then president.  Now I know.  It was none other than Orange County’s own Lincoln Club which had scripted the role Reagan would play as governor and later, president.  Then Schwarzenegger waltzed into the California Governor’s mansion before Davis’ term was up and “terminated” him.  Neat stuff.  Such is the glitter and the persuasive power of the illusion.   

Everybody loves show business.  Is it any surprise that Fred Thompson announced his candidacy on the Jay Leno Show?  His “show business” toolbox and agenda trumped his showing up at the Republican debates with all those other worn out Republican candidates who are hard-pressed to deliver even one line with authenticity.  Thompson can.  Just like Reagan.  Just like Schwarzenegger.  Forget the substance and the reality of it all; be true to the illusion.  And how it looks, how it sounds, not how it really is.  Thompson knows it, too.  And so do his handlers. 

I will hate it if I am right that we might be all in love with the illusion and how the candidate appears in the camera lens.  Cameras love actors.  Take George W. Bush. Please.  Bush is one of the best actors the GOP ever manipulated to run, and they know it.  How else could someone like Bush get elected twice and run America and the English language amuck in just over six years if he had been telling the truth all along about WMDs, not offing secret CIA operatives, or shredding the Constitution like when he sets his gas weed-eater after some brush at  the Crawford Ranch?  Compared to Kerry’s Ichabod Crane likeness on camera, the lens makes Bush look smarter than he is, and in the business of make-believe, every little bit helps.  I admit to looking at this with a shallow eye.  But reality bites.  Just look at who voters have elected in the past and why, and forget issues.  Think camera. Think illusion. History can be unkind.  Last night I dreamed of Reagan, Schwarzenegger, and Thompson, dancing a soft-shoe routine together on stage, twirling canes and shaking sailor straw hats to “There’s No Business like Show Business.”   

Ugh.

NEXT- MICHAEL FAULKNER

Last Update: 10/13/2007