Fredipedia: The Definitive Fred Thompson Quick Reference
Posted on 10/27/2007 4:59:10 PM PDT by Josh Painter
Fred Thompson is currently under fire for being too "laid-back." His debate performances are said to be "undercaffeinated." A barely discernible pause at the start of one answer was reported by the play-by-play pundits as a "senior moment."
Touted by his promoters as the new Reagan, Thompson has apparently inherited all the old Reagan's flaws. He, too, was famously lethargic, and said to doze off during afternoon briefings: in long cabinet meetings, he was prone to be prone within 10 minutes, etc. President Reagan never denied it: "They say hard work never killed anyone," he remarked, "but I figure, why take the chance?" He did, though, confess during a particularly fraught government crisis to "burning the midday oil." Ronald Reagan succeeded a chief executive who was the very definition of "phony energy," and whose failed presidency remains a monument to the folly of confusing perpetual activity with energy...
So what I look for in a candidate is, first, an absence of phony energy and, second, signs of real energy. I can live with a Fred Thompson "senior moment" compared to most of the alternatives. In that same debate, the more damaging answer came from Mitt Romney in response to an arcane hypothetical about whether bombing Iran required congressional approval. "You sit down with your attorneys," began the former governor. "We're going to let the lawyers sort out what we needed to do and what we didn't need to do." There was no pause. Romney just rushed in to fill the dead air with all the frantic energy of an old-school disc jockey whose traffic jingle has jammed. And, as a consequence, a war-on-terror hawk came over like a Kerryesque legalistic ass-coverer. A "senior moment" to collect his thoughts might have helped.
So I'm well-disposed to the laconic...
(Excerpt) Read more at macleans.ca ...
Gotta love Steyn
Amen.
Oh boy....
from Steyn’s article: [President Calvin Coolidge] “was a magnificent tax-cutter, and he vetoed hugely popular farm-subsidy bills on the grounds that, “if the government gets into business on any large scale, we soon find that the beneficiaries attempt to play a large part in the control. While in theory it is to serve the public, in practice it will be very largely serving private interests. It comes to be regarded as a species of government favour, and those who are the most adroit get the larger part of it.” “
Boy, could we use some of that thinking today.
another great excerpt: “As for phony energy, consider Bill Clinton. Back in 1998, when he was fending off the first few months of the Monica business, President Clinton used to say that much as he’d like to resign, hand over to Al Gore and sit on the beach all day, he had no choice but to accept the burdens of office and “get back to working for the American people.” There wasn’t a single morning, he assured the public, that he didn’t wake up thinking about how he could make life better for the American people. I’m a foreigner, so it’s hardly my place to tell the American people that the best response to this is: “oh, bugger off, you neo-monarchical narcissist.” The founding principle of the republic is that the American people are perfectly capable of making life better for themselves, and all you wannabe-king types need to do is get out of the way. “
Reagan was older then when he first ran for POTUS and put more effort into campaigning for it than Fred does. Fred needs to increase his support but isn’t even putting in the work needed just to maintain his standing in the polls.
LOL! Yep, what looks to others as laconic can be a real plus!
I wish more people could actually put together sentences like that today.
I don’t remember Ronald Reagan as being particularly frenetic when he was running for President. He just went around making stump speeches, and giving talks at fundraisers, similar to what Fred is doing.
Ping list pings.
Ping; don’t miss this.
Derb?
Good read!
Lethargy bump : )
~Mark Stein
Well said, Mark!
Heck, Churchill didn’t get out of bed until after noon.
Ooops! Make that Steyn. That’s what happens when you’re distracted by other things.
bump
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