Is Fred a Fraud?
The Tennessean has an article up about Fred Thompson and his old red pickup truck. I wasn’t in Tennessee during the ’94 or ’96 Senate campaign, so I missed it, but apparently, it was all an extension of Fred’s acting.
Ingram recalls a meeting with Thompson at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Cookeville: “He wasn’t too happy with traditional campaigning. The conversation went something like this: I said, ‘What would you do if you could do what you want to do?’ He said, ‘I’d go to my dad’s used car lot (in Lawrenceburg) and get a truck and drive it across the state.’ I said, ‘Do it.’ People thought he was crazy. It worked because it wasn’t an unnatural or unreal thing for him to do.”
Ingram sprinkled on some of his marketing pixie dust to make it work. They decided it had to be a red truck because that would be photogenic: “Red made sense. We didn’t want anything too flashy, so used made sense. We wanted something that was going to be roomy because there were going to be people with him from time to time, so we got a stretch cab” …
… And so it was that on Aug. 5, 1994, Senate candidate Fred Thompson parked his black Lincoln Continental and started driving a used 1990 cherry-red, extended cab Chevy pickup truck with four on the floor and almost 200,000 miles on it. The campaign leased it for $500 a month.
With a package of Red Man chewing tobacco on the seat and country music blaring, Thompson drove from Mountain City to Memphis and back again.
He changed his sophisticated, educated lawyerly look into a good ole boy. He packed 6 feet, 6 inches into jeans, cowboy boots and a work shirt and gave it a “how y’all?” at each stop. He sometimes delivered his “throw the bums out” stump speech from atop the truck bed.
Where’s the Republican outrage on this one? Hillary Clinton tries to adopt a Southern Dialect, and she gets attacked, Fred dumbs it down for the plebes…but I haven’t heard anything yet.
Granted, most politicians pretend they are someone they are not, but I’ve heard quite a few people talking up Fred as this uber-genuine guy…doesn’t appear that way at all. Seems like another Lawyer, who happened to be an actor too, who decided to jump into politics.
Of course, I know the “Fred-Heads” (a term I’ve heard on Phil Valentine) will say I’m just “scared” of the prospect of Fred Thompson, but personally I’m not convinced his shtick will play across the nation. To Tennesseans and Conservative elites, Fred Thompson has enormous name appeal, but I’m not sure that it travels across the Nation. I think to many he will be a ‘B’ movie actor who served some time in the Senate, and wants to be President. I’m not saying he’s not qualified, as I don’t think anyone is more “qualified” to be President than the next person…even Bush 2004, who had served as President for four years, wasn’t more qualified than Kerry. However, I’m just not sure he’s the diamond in the rough that Conservatives, disillusioned with their current choices, seem to think he is.
March 18th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Sean -
As usual, this headline should fall behind the famous -
“Germans Bomb Pearl Harbor!”
Sorry that you didn’t know about this, but Fred’s simplification of his campaign in 1994 is public knowledge. Like others who post on this site, you seem to be out of the loop.
Cheers,
Rob
March 18th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Sometimes the ‘simplification’ that plays on the state level doesn’t work on a national level. Ask Lamar about his plaid shirt.
Part of the appeal of Thompson right now is that he’s not the other guys..he’s the guy on the bench that we are all hoping the coach puts in the game. Once he’s out there and answering questions and taking definitive opinions, some of his star power will diminish. Not to say he isn’t a good possibility, but it’s easy to be attractive when you don’t sound like a bunch of relatively flawed people. I still think he won’t run. Don’t think he wants it bad enough, and as I’ve written elsewhere…that’s a compliment.
March 18th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Roberto,
I didn’t say this was Earth shattering news, I simply pointed to a Tennessean article and opined on it.
Speaking of bait and switch though; How’s Tennesseans for Allen going?
March 19th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Now Sean, you know just like I do that George Allen is laying low, waiting for the “call” from Rob to run. This whole Fred thing’s only a diversion until then. Just a matter of time.
March 19th, 2007 at 7:31 am
oh yeah, I forgot:
Cheers!
March 19th, 2007 at 8:53 am
The article itself says it best:
“It worked because it wasn’t an unnatural or unreal thing for him to do.â€
Although I will point out that I was not critical of Hilary’s patois-speech, nor am I necessarily championing Thompson.
In fact, I’m sort of hoping he doesn’t run. If he runs I might end up voting for him, screwing up my vow to myself to vote third party in the next presidential election in order to make a point.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Sean -
Apparently election results don’t reach your neck of the Internet. In case the Pony Express has yet to arrive, you might be interested to know that George Allen lost his Senate seat in the Commonwealth of Virginia. If you are having a hard time understanding what I mean by “lost,” you might equate the term to Harold Ford, Jr.’s similar result in 2006.
Roger -
No response needed, I guess. The world knows that the only reason you try to drag candidates (and, in this case, prospective candidates) down is to mask your own personal failures.
Cheers,
Rob
March 19th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Sorry Rob, I guess I was just waiting for a post-mortem on your website, you know, because he was your #1 guy, then he lost, and you didn’t even acknowledge it. I didn’t know if you were just the uber-fair weather fan or what.
I mean, I acknowledged Harold Ford’s loss, and I didn’t even really like the guy; you liked George Allen so much you created a website dedicated just to him, then his career was pretty much ended, and you couldn’t even wish him a bon voyage, a farewell, a “good day to you sir”. Is that the kind of bandwagon mentality you are going to be bringing to the Fred Thompson Express?
March 19th, 2007 at 9:53 am
You can take the guy out of Lawrence County, but you can’t take Lawrence County out of the guy.
I remember reading a column in Cosmopolitan many years ago by mag editor and New York sophisticate Helen Gurley Brown in which she wrote about going home to Arkansas sometimes and standing barefoot in the kitchen and frying up pork chops. It’s just a Southern thang, Sean. We’re never far from our roots no matter where we are.
March 19th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Rob –
To what personal failures are you referring Deacon Rob? Generally speaking, I’ve done quite well as far as I am aware.
Do you mean like your “races” for Congress and the Knox County Commission? You really put yourself on the line, don’t you? Interesting what you do when the going gets tough.
Cheers!
Your best bud,
Roger
P.S. Sorry! I should have sent that through my “backchannels”!
March 19th, 2007 at 10:14 am
P.S. By the way, what (prospective) candidate am I running down? I love Fred Thompson.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Geez, Rob. Stick to politics. Psychology doesn’t need you.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
[...] He would like to know if Fred Thompson is a fraud for the whole good ol’ boy in a pickup thing. Where’s the Republican outrage on this one? Hillary Clinton tries to adopt a Southern Dialect, and she gets attacked, Fred dumbs it down for the plebes…but I haven’t heard anything yet. [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Fred’s schtick in 1994 worked because it wasn’t schtick – it is part of who Fred is. He’s from Lawrenceburg, son of a guy who ran a carwash. He went to the University of Memphis. The pickup truck fit him bceause it’s part of the culture from which he came.
Hillary’s southern accent is a total fake put on by a Chigago girl who went to Wellsley, and it didn’t ring true because it is not in any way a part of who she really is.
March 19th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
P.S. Oops. Fred’s dad was a used car salesman, not a car wash operator. Not sure what I was thinking.
But still, Fred’s essentially a kid from small-town Tennessee who made it big. Read the University of Memphis Daily News story about Fred and Lawrenceburg. It shows you that Fred, no matter how far he’s gone in life, hasn’t left Lawrenceburg totally behind.
Link:
http://www.memphisdailynews.com/Editorial/StoryFocus.aspx?&id=96464
And why was Fred back in Lawrenceburg a couple years ago for an event? He was helping raise money to rehab the Crockett Theater, a historic cinema that was being refurbished to start showing classic films.
Fred hasn’t forgotten his roots or who he is.
March 19th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Dunno, Kat. I think I would rather him leave politics and go into psychology. He might do less damage that way.
March 19th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Bill, perhaps he is just being himself. Personally, I don’t buy the whole “man of the people” angle from him, any more than I do from John Edwards. They might have both grown up poor-to-middle class, but they long ago left those lives and adopted the big city, wealthy lifestyle. So was he going back to his “roots” naturally, or for political reasons? Does he act the same way in Lawrence County as he does in NYC or Washington? If not, when is he faking it, and when is he being “real”?
March 19th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Roger -
Since we’re wishing here, I wish for you to leave the Great State of Tennessee and run Planned Parenthood or the ACLU on the national level.
Either way, it seems like killing an organization and bettering this State with one move.
Cheers,
Rob
March 20th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Rob,
I wish you to leave the state and go run the George Allen for President campaign.
Cheers,
Sean
March 20th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Nah. Knoxville is far enough away. But I’ll confess to being utterly clueless as to what what he’s talking about. Running the ACLU? Planned Parenthood? And killing them? Huh? I’m lost. Not the first time with Rob, but still…