Can You Feel The Excitement?

I think I have a treatment available to anyone out there in need of relaxation, and you don’t even need Diazepam. This will mellow you out faster than a Kenny G retrospective.

It’s called The Fred Thompson Campaign For President.

As the New York Times notes here…

Twenty-four minutes after he began speaking in a small restaurant the other day, Fred D. Thompson brought his remarks to a close with a nod of his head and an expression of thanks to Iowans for allowing him to “give my thoughts about some things.”

Then he stood face to face with a silent audience.

“Can I have a round of applause?” Mr. Thompson said, drawing a rustle of clapping and some laughter.

“Well, I had to drag that out of you,” he said.

And so charismatic and personable too, isn’t he? I guess he acquired a lot of people skills working in front of a TV camera for all those years...

Mr. Thompson told few jokes and, while an easygoing presence, did not appear to have much interest in the small talk that is a staple of retail campaigning. As he defined his candidacy, Mr. Thompson spoke in broad generalities about the conservative principles that he said had informed his political views — in particular, federalism and cutting government spending — and led him to run for president.

In the process, he often lulled audiences into the kind of stillness that engulfed the room when he finished talking at the “Lunch with Fred Thompson” in Marshalltown.

“On prosperity, I have a real novel approach, a real creative approach,” he said in Coralville the other night. “Let’s continue doing what works and quit doing what doesn’t work in this country. Tax cuts work.”

Yep, that’s “novel and creative” all right, Fred. So novel and creative that every other candidate who has ever run for elected office has tried it before, I’m sure.

The more he speaks, the more I continue to be amazed by the depth of Thompson’s curiosity and intellect…not!

And so knowledgeable of history also, as you can see here…

Still, Mr. Thompson at times seems to be looking for his sea legs. In an interview with Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa on Wednesday, in talking about Iran, he referred to the “Soviet Union and China.” (Ms. Henderson, at the end of her blog post on the exchange, wrote: “No, I did not mistype. Thompson said Soviet Union rather than Russia.”)

And politically astute as well…

On the first day of his visit here, he attacked the Medicare prescription drug plan signed into law by Mr. Bush in 2003 as too costly. That bill was “written and championed by Iowa’s popular Republican Senator Charles Grassley,” as was tartly noted in a front-page story in The Des Moines Register, referring to the senator who all the Republican presidential candidates are assiduously courting for an endorsement.

I think Thompson is being almost unconsciously innovative here in that he may be the first politician who has ever tried to “phone in” his candidacy.

The only problem is that I think he’ll have done such a good job of making the voters nod off, they won’t wake up in time to answer the call.