‘We need to deserve to lead. And this is what this is all about; it’s about deserving to lead.”
That was Fred Thompson on Saturday in South Carolina during a sincere, passionate, well-grounded speech that sounded like his farewell to the campaign trail. With his announcement Tuesday afternoon that he has withdrawn his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, we now know it was. It was a bittersweet moment for any conservative who had been watching his campaign and wished it had been a more effective one earlier in the process. It was also a moment for the ages — one that every civics class in America should reflect upon: Politics is about policy and service to this great nation; that’s what makes the campaign worthwhile. That’s why you put up with the trophy-wife slanders and Chris Matthews’s questions.
It was about a year ago that Thompson filled in for radio legend Paul Harvey on ABC radio. In commentaries we reprinted here on
National Review Online, the former Tennessee senator took on Ahmadinejad,
anti-Americanism,
Hugo Chavez,
feminists,
Islamic radicals, and even the Sainted
Al Gore’s inconvenient religion. He praised the
work of our men and women in uniform. He
took on immigration plans offered by the president and John McCain.
You got the sense from those commentaries that he just
gets it. He cares about his country and he cares about common sense. The good conservative sense Thompson articulated certainly resonated — the blogosphere got enthused for a possible presidential run. They could get into this guy.
That enthusiasm showed in national polls before he even got into the race. And once he got in, what he lacked in fire on the trail, he made up for with
solid conservative policy on Social Security, immigration, and the size of the military. He raised the bar for detailed policy prescriptions. You get the impression from what he says and from how he says it that he’s got consistent conservative instincts. He’s grounded.
You believed him when he said Saturday night, “It’s never been about me. It’s never even been about
you. It’s been about our country and about the future of our country …. Our party is being forced to look in the mirror….” If it was about him he’d probably have kept his comfortable
Law & Order paycheck (nevermind the syndication paychecks!) and let someone else brave the Iowa State Fair heat and reporters’ comments on his Guccis and golf cart.
They say he had no “fire in the belly.” As he’s put it: If the worst thing you can say about him is that he does not want to be president desperately enough, that’s not a bad position to be in.
CONTINUED 1 2 Next >
