I wanted to be excited about Fred Thompson, but I have heard that he was famously “lazy” in the senate. I don’t think a lazy person can make it through an election, much less run the country.
THIS IS BS MOMMY!
He’s just not an executive. Has never run anything.
I heard directly from one of Fred’s former speechwriters that Fred being lazy is a load of garbage, that Fred often was in his office long after everyone went home. I also heard an interview with the author of the new Thompson biography and he described his conversation with one of Fred’s Tennessee aides, who laughed at the charge and said she QUIT because it was killing her trying to keep up with Fred’s pace.
From John Fund:
Indeed, it is his need to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning, so he can tape three Harvey segments before returning to the “Law and Order” set for a long day of shooting, that prompts Mr. Thompson to close out our chat. “With my current schedule I might have more time to myself if I gave all this up and did start a campaign,” he says as he dons a sports coat and heads for his car.
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Every profile I’ve read on Thompson contains references, by the typical unnamed coward sources, to him being “lazy”, his Senate career lackluster, and gasp, there’s not a piece of legislation with his name on it! (Well gee, Teddy Kennedy has his name on a bunch of bills - and that’s made the nation a better place, n’est ce pas?)
My experience with Senator Thompson dates to when I was the public affairs chief for GAO, the Government Accountability Office, a legislative branch agency providing oversight of the feds. Thompson was chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, the complementary panel to GAO. It’s kind of a backwater committee, with not the visibility of say, Foreign Affairs, or Armed Services, or Appropriations. But the committee is essential to investigating the mechanics of government - and how those gears can be made to work more efficiently.
So yeah, Thompson was a big show boater - a huge proponent of the Clinger-Cohen Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996, doncha know; which required that the “government information technology shop be operated exactly as an efficient and profitable business would be operated.” Then there was his support for the President’s Management Agenda, announced in the summer of 2001, “an aggressive strategy for improving the management of the Federal government…focusing on Expanding E-Government: Improved Service Delivery for the American People Using Information Technology and Expanding E-Government: Partnering for a Results-Oriented Government.” Yowzah, man, hot Hot HOT! Front page baby!
...So now I hear the stories about Thompson, which are typical of 1. Opponents who want to drag him down, which is the way it works, and 2. A lazy press corps who but for a few stalwarts, didn’t cover this subject matter when Thompson was preaching at the wind.
Now, I’m too much of a nothing burger to have any say in this race. But Thompson, whatever his faults, is not getting a fair shake. When you’re waxing on about OMB circulars and Clinger-Cohen’s e-billing protocols, you’re not exactly lazy or lackluster. In fact, you’re actually doing what government is supposed to be doing, which is trying to do better.
- Jeff Nelligan, The Coastmaster..., June 8, 2007
http://coastmaster.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-slacker-big-fred-grinds-it-out.html
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Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, said he saw Thompson as a thoughtful lawmaker able to reach across party lines.
“He worked plenty and he absorbed plenty,” said Ornstein.
Thomas Ferraro, Capitol Hill Blue, June 2, 2007
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/2619
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In interviews, several of his former Senate aides expressed surprise at suggestions by unnamed critics that their old boss might be lethargic.
“Whoever says this man is lazy never worked for him,” said Bill Outhier, a former aide who recalled the campaign finance staff “working until midnight” because the senator was still in the office.
- Julia Malone, Cox News Service, May 11, 2007
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As Robert Novak reported last week, the rap againt Thomspon is that “he was not a hard worker during his eight years in the Senate.” Yet I’m told by a source who was there that Thompson was a reasonably diligent member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In any case, this rap is unlikely to hurt Thompson with voters outside the beltway.
What will matter is whether Thompson is prepared to campaign diligently for the nomination. If so, he likely will represent a force to be reckoned with.
- Paul Mirengoff, Power Line, March 25, 2007
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017150.php
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The rap on Thompson is that he was “lazy” when he was in the Senate. This is precisely the same sort of rap that Leftists made about Ronald Reagan. In fact, this is strength. Because Thompson acts from principle, he does not need to engage in the Machiavellian machinations which pass for “work” in Washington. The reality is that it is absurd to consider Thompson, who has worked during his life in more real jobs than almost any politician in Washington and who today stars in two television programs as well as being the substitute for Paul Harvey and a frequent commentator in conservative periodicals is “lazy” at all. Like Reagan, he probably works harder than anyone in Washington.
- Bruce Walker, Intellectual Conservative, March 22, 2007
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/03/22/yes-the-next-reagan
Not true ! He worked very hard to pass McCain-Feingold in order to restrict political speech in America ! Give the man some credit where credit is due !