US News & World Report | April 4, 2007 | Michael Barone
The possible entry of Fred Thompson into the Republican presidential race seems to have changed the standings. The USA Today/Gallup poll taken March 23-25 shows Rudy Giuliani with 31 percent of the vote, down from 44 percent March 2-4, and Thompson, a new name on the list, at 12 percent. Similar results come from the Rasmussen poll announced today. Giuliani still leads, with 26 percent, but that's down from 35 percent in the poll released March 27. Thompson, again a new entry, is at 14 percent. In both polls, John McCain's standing is essentially unchanged and so is Newt Gingrich's. Mitt Romney&emdash;the fundraising champ&emdash;is in single digits (only 3 percent in Gallup, 8 percent in Rasmussen). One more poll result: Thompson has replaced Giuliani in first place in the 10th week of the Pajamas Media online straw poll. Giuliani had run first on the Republican side in the first nine weeks. But apply several grains of salt. This straw poll doesn't pretend to be a random-sample poll, and look at the numbers: Thompson 46, Ron Paul 27, Giuliani 9. And Intrade numbers now put Giuliani's chances at 34 percent, Thompson's at 22, and McCain's at 20. At one point, McCain was 45 points ahead of Giuliani on Intrade; Giuliani's surge in February and March changed that. Now Thompson's possible entry has changed the odds.
What's going on here? One thing is that the labels we have used for many years now to characterize Republican presidential candidates are irrelevant. Giuliani is described as a liberal on cultural issues and Thompson a conservative, yet some of Giuliani's previous voters seem ready to go over to Thompson. Yes, they may be cultural conservatives who now are moving to a candidate they think more in line with their views. But they must also be people who believe Giuliani and Thompson have something in common that they'd like to see in the White House. What is that?
Strong leadership at a time when we're at risk of attack, I think. A case in point is Thompson, partly as a result of his work as an actor, partly by his recent substituting for Paul Harvey, but also because of his by now long career in public life. One can note that Thompson, unlike Giuliani, has never served in real life in an executive position, unlike the other Thompson, former Wisconsin Gov. and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who announced his own candidacy this week. But Tommy Thompson is much less well known to voters, and his folksy Midwestern style does not project the aura of strength that Fred Thompson's bluff southern style does. Tommy Thompson did more than any other governor to advance welfare reform, starting in 1987, and Wisconsin's welfare rolls were cut by more than 90 percent. He showed the way for the rest of the nation; Giuliani as mayor of New York hired one of Thompson's top welfare administrators, Jason Turner, to run the city welfare department. On this issue Giuliani was following in Thompson's footsteps.
Irrelevant Asides Department: At a time when U.S. attorneys are news, both Giuliani and Fred Thompson have experience in U.S. attorneys' offices. Giuliani, as is well known, served as U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York&emdash;probably the most important U.S. attorney's office in the nation. Thompson, before he became Howard Baker's counsel on the Senate Watergate committee, was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, based in Nashville. In 1969-71, when I was a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, I used to watch him argue appeals in moonshine cases in the Courthouse in Cincinnati. He struck me as not particularly impressive or well prepared, but then the only issue in most of these cases was the validity of the search, and there wasn't much question about that.
Closing note: But Rudy is still running strong, in the primary and the general, in Florida, according to this Quinnipiac poll.
Barone seems not to agree with your assessment of Fred’s legal intellect.