Far from wussy. Did you see how fast he slammed Chris the other day? No delay time whatsoever when he told Chris he didn't care about his opinion, something to that effect, after Chris jokingly chided Fred for elaborating on one of his answers. Fastest gun in the west.
"But what about his failure . . . "
Tell ya what. Why don't you make a list all his failures not to do something and I will address those I'm familiar with. That way we can get 'er done all at one time.
I am still learning about Thompson, and the most important failure of which I am unaware is his campaign finance investigation.
Here is the Committee report:
http://www.senate.gov/~govt-aff/2.pdf
The investigation was a debacle in that White House, AFL-CIO, and numerous other entities simply gave Thompson’s Committee the finger and did not comply with subpoenas. The report blames the Majority Leader for setting a deadline of around nine months, which was enough time to drag everything out.
The debacle set a horrible precedent of letting people get away with ignoring Congressional investigations, and even if Thompson did oppose the deadline, he presumably made the decision not to actually sue to enforce any of the subpoenas. He was also responsible for the decision to make the investigation broad enough to threaten numerous Republican senators to avoid any charge of partisanship, which probably doomed the investigation from the git-go.
Personally, I am sick of Republicans who believe that bipartisanship is a virtue, as they are constantly taken to the cleaners by the Democrats. That is what I fear most about Thompson.