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As many understand the Equal Time rules dealing with political campaigns, any time an announced candidate is given time on a network, all of his opponents have to be given equal time on the network. Since Fred Thompson is a character on a television show that airs new episodes once a week, and many more times a week in syndication, you can imagine how much of a mess that would make, if he had already declared his candidacy. And the fact that he will be a major player in an upcoming movie only adds to those problems.

Now I'm not real sure that any of those appearance would actually trigger the Equal Time rule, but even if they didn't, there would be enough mewling about it in the press that whatever truth was there would be lost in the noise.

Once Fred Thompson declares, the Equal Time rules, whatever they are, begin to take effect. Many of us believe that he's finishing up his contracts so that when he does declare, it doesn't cause problems for his employer, and then he's free to do all of the campaigning stuff he can't do right now as part of his contract.