Posted on 12/20/2007 9:15:43 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I’d like to follow up on Roger “Event? What Event?” Simon’s Politico story with some details about Fred Thompson’s visit to the Waverly, Iowa newspaper. You know, the newspaper where Thompson’s staff made Simon and Mark Halperin wait outside. It seems that Simon appeared a bit miffed by the exclusion and that, in my opinion, colored his entire story.
According to the Waverly Democrat (via an e-mail commenter), here’s what happened.
Two national journalists who had covered the Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson appearance in Waterloo earlier in the afternoon showed up for Thompson’s sit-down session, but were asked by the campaign to wait outside.
“[The exclusive interview with Waverly Newspapers] was the campaign’s idea,” Brunkhorst [the county chair for Fred Thompson’s campaign] said. “The campaign just wants to make sure they give local newspapers an exclusive, because they don’t want a ‘big media’ campaign. They want to make sure they’re focusing on the grassroots.”
In other words, Thompson is running a state campaign for a state election. He wanted to give this local newspaper something special, something no other publication would have. That’s not a bad thing to do and it’s very much in keeping with the kind of campaign Thompson has been running. He’s making personal and unique contact with the folks in Iowa and that can go a long way.
Notice that at no point in his story did Simon say he even tried to get an explanation about why he was excluded. That, again, is pretty shoddy journalism. I suppose it would have been tough for Simon to ask with the weapons-grade pouty lip he must have been sporting the rest of the day.
But enough of Simon. We’ve already seen that his story was inaccurate and heavily biased. Oh, and for the record, he hasn’t answered my comment to him that I sent yesterday. Why should he/ I’m just a little blogger and he’s Roger “How Dare You Diss Me!” Simon of The Politico.
I am a little confused about why the editor didn’t report the meeting to Simon the way it was reported in her own newspaper. More on that after the jump.
Here’s what the editor had to say to Simon about Thompson’s visit:
She e-mailed me back that Thompson “was so vague that I would be hard-pressed to write a story. Simply put, there is no news peg other than he came to the newsroom with his model wife and a beehive of staffers. When I asked him specifically what he would do as prez for farmers in Bremer County, he resorted to glittering generalities.”
So the sum total of Thompson’s day in Waverly was meeting with a newspaper editor and saying nothing and then meeting about 15 people in a warm firehouse and saying nothing.
Don’t you love the editorializing in that last paragraph? It’s like Thompson beat him up and stole his lunch money or something. Let’s move on, though, and look at the transcript in the Waverly paper. Here’s how Thompson answered the question about helping farmers in Iowa.
I would continue to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I’ve been looking all over Iowa for a bad steak and I can’t find it. Been trying my best. It’s not a matter of what I would do for the farmers. Farmers are not looking for a president to hand them something. Farmers want fair treatment and a chance to prosper in a free economy and that’s what I would help ensure. There’s a lot of programs we’ve got out there, some of which are good programs, some of which are not. And I think that we need to work our way through that and make sure we’re doing what’s good for the country, not just the farmers, not just the people of Iowa, not just the people of Tennessee. But good for the country. A sound policy that makes sense. I think there’s a lot more that we could do for the working farmer in terms of ecological programs and environmental programs - land conservation, soil conservation - that would be fair and it would be beneficial to the nation and to Iowa and to our country. We’re going to have to phase out the corporate welfare system we’ve got, however. There are extremely rich people living in skyscrapers in Manhattan that are receiving subsidy payments. I think that’s wrong. I’d put a stop to that if it was within my power. That still continues in this latest Farm Bill and it’s not right. There ought to be a cutoff at some level and it’s not right to have millionaires receiving farm subsidies.
I’m not seeing any “…glittering generalities…” here. In fact, it looks to me like Thompson said something that I’ll bet not many candidates are saying this month. In fact, it looks like he got into a few specifics. Here are the ones I picked out.
1) He wouldn’t do anything to help the farmers in Iowa as such but would do everything he could to make sure they had a fair chance to compete. 2) He would examine the farm programs and cull the ones that aren’t working. 3) He’d end the farm subsidies that went to corporations if he has the authority to do so. 4) He’d work for common-sense, fair conservation rules.
Admittedly, he didn’t do bullet points and he didn’t lay out a white paper for the news staff, but he gave a good number of specifics, enough to give the editor a very good idea where he stands on the issue.
Now, I’ve been paying attention and I’m not seeing where any other candidate has said that they’d cut so much as one farm subsidy program. I’m not seeing where they’d take the farmers into account when it comes to conservation laws. I’m not seeing where any candidate, even among the Republicans, are telling people that it’s not the President’s job to do for anyone but that it’s the President’s job to make sure everyone gets a fair shot to compete.
You can call that answer “glittering generalities” if you want and you can say, as Simon did, that he didn’t say anything, but it looks to me like he said quite a lot. In fact, it looks to me like Fred Thompson is running in exactly the opposite direction from every other candidate that I’ve seen thus far. It’s a direction that ought to please conservatives quite a bit.
There’s quite a lot of good stuff in that transcript. Read the whole thing.
I don’t follow Fred Thompson closely. But the little bits and pieces I hear are very refreshing. He seems like a straight shooter who’s subjecting himself to this process out of a motive somehow more sincere than those of his polar opposites, the political creatures who are running for love of power and adoration.
Fred does say some things. The only problem is they’re never anything new, rarely bold, and burried inside a lot of words.
Roger Simon: Fred Thompson is lazy as charged
WHEN IS RETAIL politics not retail politics? When candidates refuse to get off their big buses and go do it.
Fred Thompson rolled into Waverly, Iowa, on a giant brown bus Tuesday. He also had a van, an entourage of guys with earpieces and a press aide.
Thompson's public schedule said: "Fred Thompson Tours Downtown Waverly and Drops by Waverly Democrat."
It was not a bitterly cold day -- temperatures were somewhere in the high 30s -- and doing a downtown walk would have been a perfectly normal political event.
The Waverly Democrat, a semi-weekly newspaper, is located right on the main street in town, which is called Bremer Avenue.
Waverly has a population of about 9,000, and while Bremer Avenue was not exactly thronged this day, people were in the shops, and potential voters were definitely out and about doing shopping or sitting in the diners.
Mark Halperin of Time magazine and I drove up to Waverly to catch the Thompson walk-about, and since we got there early, we popped into the offices of the Waverly Democrat.
Anelia Dimitrova, the executive regional editor, greeted us warmly. I sat down with her for a brief interview.
She said Thompson was the first candidate to come into the paper. The paper does not endorse candidates, and maybe that is why the others have skipped it. "He's got a lot of catching up to do," Dimitrova said. "I think it's a sign he is behind. I don't think he necessarily wants to run. Bluntly, I don't know why he is running."
This is the question that has dogged the Thompson campaign from the beginning. While sometimes he displays bursts of energy at a speech here or there, he is often described as "laconic" on the road.
Thompson, his entourage and his wife, Jeri, arrived at the newspaper and after exchanging a few pleasantries, Thompson headed in to his meeting with Dimitrova in a conference room.
Dimitrova invited Mark and me into the interview with Thompson but the Thompson press aide refused. Dimitrova said she had no problem with us being there, but the press aide refused again.
It was no big deal. We waited for Thompson outside the conference room and after a few minutes he emerged, left the newspaper office and headed straight onto his large, brown bus.
But what happened to the "tour of downtown Waverly" that was on his schedule?
Cancelled. He was not going to walk the streets of Waverly in search of voters.
Instead, Thompson rode four blocks to the local fire station. Local fire stations always have captive audiences (unless there is a fire).
Inside, Thompson shook a few hands -- there were only about 15 people there -- and then Chief Dan McKenzie handed Thompson the chief's fire hat so Thompson could put it on.
Thompson looked at it with a sour expression on his face.
"I've got a silly hat rule," Thompson said.
In point of fact, the "silly" hat was the one Chief McKenzie wore to fires and I am guessing none of the firefighters in attendance considered it particularly silly, but Thompson was not going to put it on. He just stood there holding it and staring at it.
To save the moment, Jeri Thompson took the hat from her husband's hands and put it on her head.
"You look cute," Thompson said to her. She did.
Jeri took off the hat and McKenzie led the Thompsons over to a fire truck.
The chief invited Thompson to climb up behind the wheel, but Thompson said, "Naw, this is fine." And he stood there looking at the fire truck.
Jeri once again saved the moment by engaging the chief in some actual conversation.
Thompson walked away from the fire truck, posed for a picture or two and the event was over. He and his entourage got on his bus and roared out of town.
Later, his press aide sent Mark and me an e-mail of explanation, though we had not asked for one.
Thompson had skipped going up and down Bremer Avenue after the newspaper meeting because, the press aide explained, "We can't control where the newspapers are. Had it been a more 'main-street' type town, it would have been different."
But Waverly is a "main-street" type town, and the newspaper office was right there on the main street of town surrounded by businesses.
The press aide also claimed that "ice and snow on the streets presented a safety issue," but Halperin and I had no problem walking on the mostly well-shoveled avenue.
Later in the day, I sent an e-mail to Anelia Dimitrova, asking her about the private meeting she had with Thompson at the newspaper office.
She e-mailed me back that Thompson "was so vague that I would be hard-pressed to write a story. Simply put, there is no news peg other than he came to the newsroom with his model wife and a beehive of staffers. When I asked him specifically what he would do as prez for farmers in Bremer County, he resorted to glittering generalities."
So the sum total of Thompson's day in Waverly was meeting with a newspaper editor and saying nothing and then meeting about 15 people in a warm firehouse and saying nothing.
When he was supposed to go out and find voters in shops and diners, talk to them and answer their questions, he decided to skip it and get back on his luxury bus instead.
That's not retail politics. That's not Iowa. And that's not laconic. That's lazy.
Simon and Halperin are snipers.
Simon is a piece of work. I sent him a not-so-kind email about his latest hit piece (posted above).
It’s neither. As a Thompson supporter myself, I cringe every time he gives an answer. His answer on Compean and Ramos to Glenn Beck is a perfect example.
http://www.glennbeck.com/news/12112007.shtml
GLENN: Compean and Ramos.
SENATOR THOMPSON: Oh, yes, with regard to them, you know, I’m a lawyer and I have prosecuted cases and I’ve defended them. I always know the details of the facts rule as far as I’m concerned. But I’ll tell you my impression from a distance from what I read. I think that they are probably a proper subject for consideration for commutation. It seems that they did do some things wrong, they did try to cover up what they had done. You’ve got to apply the law to everybody equally. But they were much, much too harshly sentenced. They never should have been charged with what they were charged with because it carried a mandatory sentence. The jury didn’t know that when they convicted them and you can’t get around the fact the jury convicted them what they were charged of. So it’s one of those cases where an all-out wipe the slate totally clean is probably not in order but a commutation to say, okay, these guys did wrong but they’ve paid for what they’ve done; they should not spend any more time in prison and they should be commuted. It looks to me like that’s probably a just outcome in a case like that.
The correct answer should have been “They need a full pardon right now.” Instead he hemmed and hawed and equivocated left and right, and rambled on and on just to give a half-full answer. I believe this answer is the reason Mitt Romney got Tom Tancredo’s endorsement, and not Fred Thompson.
In other words he was honest again. He said he is a lawyer and looks at things from those eyes. He said they broke some laws but were way to harshly punished and probably deserved their sentence commuted.
You’ve pretty much managed to say nothing in that post.
I support Thompson because he’s the best candidate for the job in the race. Unfortunately, he’s also the worst campaigner. I see a distinct difference. I cringe because he makes a terrible case for why he should get the job, not because he would do a poor job if he somehow managed to stumble into office. But he’s never going to get the job if he doesn’t get his delivery in shape.
Wish you would go support someone else. Rudy needs a backer or two.
From what I see in the polls, Rudy easily has double the support Fred has. Fred started out as the front runner, and then plummeted like a rock. Could it be because Fred can’t run a campaign to save his life? Or is Rudy just the better candidate?
Perhaps if Fred’s other supporters actually told it like it is, he might have corrected course by now.
Name recognition was everything to begin this long long arduous journey. Rudy started in the 40’s. He is statistically tied over the last week with Fred considering margin of error. He has no momentum strategy in the early run and it seems to me that he is pretty much done. He had a year to make his case. He failed.
Sure Fred got a pop in the beginning because nobody settled on Rudy or any other candidate for that matter. The press wrote a narrative and some bought into it. He has a chance to turn it around because people know he is the electable conservative. Watch him rise in Iowa - 16 in the last poll and rising fast. Ron Paul is ahead of Rudy there.
The way that the media—and many others—try to ignore Thompson makes me respect him more and more.
They fear the right.
He must be right.
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