I'm With Fred

I.  Why now?

There has never been, nor will there be, any question that I will vote against the Democratic Party's 2008 nominee for president. And because I don't care to waste my vote on a protest, it will be cast for the GOP's nominee, whoever that turns out to be.

Moreover, I'm not, and have never been, among those who thought that a Democratic win in 2008 is inevitable. To the contrary, notwithstanding Dubya's low polling numbers, I'm convinced that the GOP's chances are at least as good as his were in 2000 or 2004, and that every single one of the potential Democratic nominees is eminently beatable. Indeed, depending on intervening events, some of them may turn out to be beatable in a landslide; and I'm convinced that whether it's Hillary, Obama, or Edwards, the Dems are going to feel serious buyers' remorse on the day after their nominee is finally decided. So I think that it does matter — indeed, that it matters a whole lot — who the GOP picks from among the present major candidates.

I've been genuinely, and intentionally, undecided among most of those major GOP candidates until now. But by March 4, 2008, when votes including mine will be tallied in Texas' primary elections, the GOP nominee may already have been effectively decided. That's far from certain — the possibility of a genuine national nominating convention, brokered or otherwise, is no longer a silly notion — but the possibility of my own primary vote becoming moot is still high enough to impel me to publicly express my preference and open my checkbook now, in hopes of affecting things even slightly in other states with earlier primaries.

Thus go I on record today: Fred Thompson is my guy for 2008.

II.  Why Fred?

On every issue I care deeply about, Fred Thompson is a genuine, thoughtful conservative — without any major exceptions or doubtful areas that I have to forgive or ignore. And in the simplest possible words: I trust him because he's demonstrated that he has a real political spine.

Fred's my "Goldilocks candidate": On national defense and foreign policy generally, on taxes (and, in particular, income tax reform), on spending, on judicial appointments, on immigration, on increasing the size and capacities of the military, and on a host of other issues, he's "Just Right." And not only do his present views and positions match my own, but they've been consistent views throughout his career, so I don't have to worry that he'll be easily talked out of them through some rationalization in the name of "expediency."

Ironically, Thompson's political spine has been most evident in some of the very same episodes that his detractors will try to spin as grounds for conservative alarm. As a senator, Thompson cast lonely, politically unpopular votes grounded on a genuine understanding of and reverence for federalism, for example, that his political opponents have characterized as being "anti-tort reform." I could write for pages about all that, but let me boil it down to a sentence: Fred Thompson has far more in common with John Roberts (for whose SCOTUS confirmation he served as sherpa) than with John Edwards, and if you can't tell the difference, you ought not be voting in the GOP primaries anyway.

Even my biggest reservation about Thompson actually reflects well on his political spine: If simply getting elected and staying atop the polls were what Fred Thompson were all about, he'd be a much better candidate, but ultimately a much worse president. For better or worse, he's running his campaign the way he believes it should be run — meaning he wasn't stampeded into an early start, and there are definite limits to the indignities that he'll willingly suffer for the sake of retail campaigning. His abrupt refusal to participate in the recent "show of hands on global warming" in the televised Iowa debate, for example, was the act of a self-secure grown-up with a serious sense of statesmanship. Fred may be a good old boy, and indeed he's charming as heck, but he's just not a panderer.

Thompson has come a long way from a very humble start, so it's wrong to say that he's unambitious. But he does lack the overweening, compulsive degree of personal ambition that's characteristic of many presidential candidates in both parties. Too much ambition is a bad thing, and Hillary Clinton, in fact, is an example of pathological ambition — a trait she entirely shares with her husband (while utterly lacking his charm). But during the late summer and fall, prompted at least in part by Fred's critics among the pundit elites, I nevertheless wondered if Thompson had "enough" ambition. And indeed, if this were like 2000, in which a single, obvious GOP front-runner was cruising to the nomination with massive funding, and without serious missteps or questions about his candidacy, then the amount of fire in Fred's belly might be inadequate for him to secure the nomination.

But historically, Thompson has been a strong closer, and he's gotten sharper over the course of the fall. The GOP race — as evidenced by the remarkable Huckabee surge (which I am convinced will be followed with a Howard Dean-like collapse) — could not possibly be more wide open. I'm satisfied that Fred has plenty enough ambition to win the nomination in these particular circumstances. And at that point — when he's past the humiliating cattle-call debates and onto a national stage from which tedious retail politics become less key — I'm convinced that Thompson will rise ever more enthusiastically to the challenge, and that he can be at least as enthusiastic and effective a campaigner as Ronald Reagan was in 1976, 1980, and 1984.

III.  Why not Mitt?

The more I've learned about Mitt Romney, the more impressed I've become with him. And it's going to take a few paragraphs to explain why he's not my guy this time around.

Basically, as I've aged, I've gradually come to treasure genuine resolve and commitment over short-term expediency. As a young adult, I was a slow and late convert to Reaganism. I supported and voted for Gerald Ford in 1976, when I viewed Reagan almost with alarm as an "extremist." I supported George H.W. Bush in the 1980 primaries, and I still thought that he was the better man of the two when they beat Carter-Mondale. To this good day, I'm still a fan of Bush-41: his assembly of the coalition that drove Saddam out of Kuwait in the Gulf War remains the single most impressive feat of international diplomacy in modern history, and I believe he is a competent and decent and honorable man who would be better appreciated now if he'd won and served out a second term.

But Poppie ran for election in 1988 on the famous "read my lips" pledge of no new taxes — and he broke that pledge in 1990. He genuinely thought he had compelling grounds to do so; he let Democrats and his own advisers talk him into it; and he therefore rationalized a compromise that violated what he had portrayed as, and what many voters genuinely believed had become, one of his fundamental, core principles. He also over-relied on minions to select and vet SCOTUS nominee David Souter — an indefensibly reckless and indisputably awful-in-hindsight nomination. It's not that Bush the Elder's heart was in the wrong place, but rather, that it wasn't balanced by a stiff enough political spine: he wasn't stubborn enough, and he was too flexible. He was certainly not the kind of entirely spineless, calculating, cynical snake oil salesman that Bill Clinton exemplifies, but Bush-41's dazzling résumé and political history (e.g., his own conversion to pro-life from pro-choice as Reagan's running-mate) always clearly telegraphed that he was more about the perceivedly practical than the thoroughly principled.

Mitt Romney reminds me of George H.W. Bush in many respects. I believe he's a good man, one who's clearly energetic and capable. But "Romneycare" scares the hell out of me — not just because I think it's a poor template for national health-care reform, but because it bespeaks a willingness to make and justify compromises with his political enemies that looks an awful lot like Poppie Bush on taxes in 1990. Mitt Romney has been a political pragmatist, not a political idealist, and it's probably true that the former is the only sort of Republican who can be elected governor of Massachusetts. But that's also a damned good reason why the GOP generally ought not look to Massachusetts as a breeding-ground for its national presidential nominees!

Mind you, it's not that I actively distrust Romney, but rather simply that I trust Fred more. The objective consistency of Fred's record comforts me in my subjective evaluation of his political backbone, and I haven't had to be talked into accepting that Fred's a conservative in his bones. Indeed, Romney's my second choice behind Fred, and I'd be perfectly content to see Romney as the GOP's Veep nominee, with him playing fully as active a management role in a Thompson Administration as Dick Cheney has played in Dubya's or as Bush-41 played in Reagan's.

IV.  Why not McCain, Giuliani, or Huckabee?

John McCain is a genuine American hero, and he's been a thoughtful and steady pillar on matters of national security in particular — if that's defined to exclude security threats from our porous borders. But he, too, is a politician of "expedience" on immigration and far too many other areas — most prominently, as the leader of the Gang of Fourteen on judicial nominees and, of course, the abomination that is McCain-Feingold. I'm still offended, and doubtful of McCain's presidential temperament, based on McCain's May 2007 incident with my home-state senator John Cornyn, who was very professionally and effectively representing the position of many concerned Texans, including me: "'F**k you! I know more about [immigration] than anyone else in the room,' shouted McCain at Cornyn." I'll vote for McCain and support him if he gets the GOP nomination. But I cannot support him in the primaries, and I still think that he's extremely unlikely to be the GOP nominee.

Rudy Giuliani is a tough, smart S.O.B., and the country could do much worse. I don't doubt Rudy's backbone, but I'm still concerned about exactly where it's located. Most of the time, he would probably govern as a conservative. But he isn't one — he's just not, he's too liberal on too many issues to be considered, overall, as anything other than a political moderate who's in the left wing of the Republican Party. If I were more pessimistic about the party's chances in the general election or more impressed by any of the Democratic candidates, I might be persuaded to support Rudy on "electability" grounds, and I won't be distressed if he gets the nod. But I can't support him over Thompson.

And as I mentioned above, I think Huckabee won't hold up to intense scrutiny, and his campaign is likely to crash as fast as it has boomed. I was much amused and originally impressed by Huckabee's humor. But I've now concluded that his weak grasp of foreign policy — compounded by his subsequent incredible disingenuousness in claiming not to owe Pres. Bush an apology after twice referring to Dubya as "arrogant" and guilty of a "bunker mentality" — is by itself sufficient to make him a candidate I can't support in the GOP primaries. And I have other serious and growing doubts about Huckabee as well.

V.  What's next?

Due to pressing professional commitments, I'm still unlikely to be blogging regularly through the remainder of this year or January. But I may post a few observations about the political race from time to time, and/or such other whimsy as the muse dictates and time permits.

In the meantime, there's now a Fred08 contribution form on my sidebar. With the wide-open races in both parties, but the front-loaded primary season nearly upon us, the month of December is obviously an awfully good time for you to make a contribution, in terms of getting lots of potential bang for your political buck in the states that will decide the nominees. Whether it's to Fred or one of the other candidates, I hope you'll consider contributing.