Fred Thompson Is Boring

I don't think I'm alone in feeling that Fred Thompson's candidacy has been both boring and disappointing. I can't believe such a hype was created about this non-entity of a candidate in the summer of 2007. It seemed as though he was the savoiur of the Republican Party, the man who could unite all the divisive factions - the dream candidate for many conservatives. But it turns out during that time we were diverting our attention away from the more interesting candidates to the spectre of Fred Thompson's "I'm With Fred" movement that has so far amounted to.....well, not very much.

Is it because he is lazy? You know, I think there's something to that argument. I can't understand why he left it so long to get into the race. Some time is understandable, he wanted to wait for the other candidates to beat each other up and allow the public to become bored with them, then sweep in as the new and fresh candidate that everyone else will rally around. But he left it too long because the expectations experienced their crescendo (the best time for Thompson to get in) and then dived, leaving Thompson's entrance an underwhelming exercise.

And I'm not sure what the efficacy is of waiting for the public to get bored either, particularly that early on in the campaign. Only a few people are paying attention to the candidates and watching the debates - the political junkies - and they aren't easily swayed in their opinions. In July most Americans didn't care about the impending 2008 political season and would have preferred it waited a little longer to get started. Few people pay attention to any candidates that early in the year before the election. Why candidates do campaign then is because it's the time when the establishment is lining up behind candidates and the donors do a lot of giving to their favourite candidates. The establishment proved unimpressed by the Thompson strategy. I think he played to the wrong crowd with his late entrance. Or he was just too lazy to campaign earlier in the year.

And his debate performances weren't stand-out. His first debate performance was one of the worst performances of a well-regarded candidate this cycle. Fred never caught fire in the debates, never got involved or even rose above the fracas between Romney and Giuliani. When he did get stuck in it was half-hearted, and he always seemed bored rather than presidentially avoiding mud-slinging.

I don't think he should have quit 'Law and Order'. He definitely should have carried on acting.