Thursday, August 16, 2007

FRED THOMPSON

Fred Thompson's Did-He-Really-Just-Say-That? Agenda

For weeks, I’ve been wondering about the quiet from the Thompson not-quite-campaign, and when discussing it, my biggest lament has been wondering the “why”, or more specifically, what’s the case for his candidacy beyond conservative hesitation about the other candidates.

Today, in an interview with the oldest of old-school political columnists, David Broder, Thompson offers up a big, bold – and extremely politically risky – "why":

But he says he thinks the public is looking for a different kind of leadership. “I think a president could go to the American people and say, ‘Here’s what we need to be doing. And I’m willing to go halfway. Now you have to make them [the opposition] go halfway.’ ”

 

The approach Thompson says he’s contemplating is one that will step on many sensitive political toes. When he says “we’re getting a free ride” fighting a necessary war in Iraq with an undersized military establishment, “wearing out our people and equipment,” it sounds like a criticism of the president and the Pentagon.

 

When he says he would have opposed adding the prescription drug benefit to Medicare, “a $17 trillion add-on to a program that’s going bankrupt,” he is fighting the bipartisan judgment of the last Congress.

 

When he says the FBI is perhaps incapable of morphing itself into the smart domestic security agency the country needs, he is attacking another sacred cow...

 

His second sourcebook contains the scary reports from Comptroller General David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, on the long-term fiscal crisis spawned by the aging of the American population and the runaway costs of health care. Walker labels the current patterns of federal spending “unsustainable” and warns that unless action is taken soon to improve both sides of the government’s fiscal ledger — spending and revenue — the next generation will suffer.

 

“Nobody in Congress or on either side in the presidential race wants to deal with it,” Thompson said. “So we just rock along and try to maintain the status quo. Republicans say keep the tax cuts; Democrats say keep the entitlements. And we become a less unified country in the process, with a tax code that has become an unholy mess, and all we do is tinker around the edges.”

 

Thompson readily concedes that he does not know “where all those chips are going to fall” when he starts challenging members of various interest groups to look beyond their individual agendas and weigh the sacrifices that could ensure a better future for their children.

 

But these issues — national security and the fiscal crisis of an aging society with runaway heath-care costs — “are worth a portion of a man’s life. If I can’t get elected talking that way, I probably don’t deserve to be elected.”

Wow. Talk about blowing the “lazy”, “unambitious” and “no ideas” arguments out of the water. It might be political suicide – Lord knows every interest group in the country will howl, and sharpen their spears should he ever get close enough to enact such an agenda.

A platform of entitlement reform, spending cuts, reduced benefits and (gasp!) tax increases might prompt some of Thompson's fans to fall out of love with him. But a campaign that takes on the toughest of issues and doesn't flinch from the most politically challenging of recommendations... well, no matter the result, a candidate can walk away from that effort with his head held high.

08/16 08:45 AMShare