Spiked Punch

In his Political Punch column, Jake Tapper helps Fred Thompson explain himself a little more thoroughly.

The larger point Thompson seems to have been trying to make is that he's not interested in the process of running for president, but he wants to be president and thinks he'd be a good one.

He also said -- and this isn't new -- that those who have had fire-in-the-belly for the job aren't necessarily the people who should be entrusted with the job.

Yeah, case in point there would be ol' Oedipus Tex, who enjoys the leadin' 'n' decidin' 'n' dressin' up 'n' all, but not so much on the part about knowin' stuff. That would have taken time and effort, cut into his two hours a day of mountain biking and the afternoon nap.

I think Thompson is a shrewd enough character to know how his phrasing will be perceived by his crowd, that they all know who is consumed by personal ambition. It's as much about the she-goblin of their fever dreams having too much fahr in the belly, than Ol' Fred not having enough.

But you could say the same thing about Romney, who is apparently hellbent on spending Tagg's inheritance on making sure the Cornfield County Caucus tilts his way ever so slightly over the Huckabee juggernut [sic]. Romney seems to enjoy trying to be everything to everyone; someone (I'm sick and I don't feel like looking it up) very astutely pointed out the other day that if Romney felt that being a pirate would get him the nomination, he would have run as a pirate. That about covers it.

His efforts to clarify his colleagues' work and Thompson's thoughts nearly complete, Tapper offers some final nuggets o' wisdom.

That's Fred. Fred is Fred. He has disdain for the process. And I think probably most of us can understand why.

Ah, Fred is Fred. But of course. It all seems so simple now.

So where was Fred's "disdain for the process" when he was making money off it, being a Warshington lobbyist for twenty years, or parlaying the perception of his gravitas (and ooooh, his height) into a comfortable supporting niche of authority characters? Why would Thompson have disdain for the process, when the initial stages of it for him consisted of mash notes and swoony bullshit from everyone from Margaret Carlson to Tweety Matthews. I mean, if we're going for fuckability quotient, then why not get Heidi Klum or Katherine Heigl in the race while we're at it?

And I'm not sure whom exactly Tapper means by "most of us" understanding Fred's imaginary disdain. Is Tapper talking as a voter here, or as part of the electoral-industrial complex, a group of vertically-integrated conglomerate media entities who make tons of money spinning their wheels over a two-year campaign? I do not quite get the observations of people such as Thompson and Tapper, who are literally part of the problem they so plaintively decry.