My, Man Fred

Standing at 6’5” he could be considered an imposing fellow, but chat for just a few minutes with this man and you’ll find a very personable, likeable individual. Before going very deep into his views in politics and life let me paint a brief portrait of Fred Dalton Thompson. I do this because before his bid for the presidency I only knew Fred Thompson as district attorney, “Arthur Branch,” on Law and Order! In later postings I hope to share more about his political philosophy and history. For now, I’d like to simply introduce you to my man, Fred.
Fred Thompson was born in Sheffield, Alabama in 1942. Soon after his birth his family moved to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee where Fred was raisedg. His high school football coach remembers him as being “smart”, but not using his abilities to the fullest. However, the coach now adds, “thank goodness he started. I think he'll make an outstanding president." (Bartholomew Sullivan, 19 Aug 2007 http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2007/aug/19/19thompson/). He married about a month after his 17th birthday to his high school sweetheart. Soon after their marriage Fred Junior or “Tony” was born.
While in college their second child, Betsy was born. In 1964 he graduated from Memphis State University. While in college he worked hard in a department store. Later he attended Vanderbilt Law School. During this time his third child, Daniel, was born.
After returning to Lawrenceburg in 1969 (now about 27 years old) to practice law he actively joined the political scene. He and friend, Tom Crews, were appointed to start the Young Republicans Club.
In 1972 Fred helped Howard Baker in his re-election bid. Baker was the ranking Republican member of the Senate Watergate Committee. Later he gave Fred the position of chief counsel to the panel's Republicans in 1973. After his work with the Watergate Committee Fred became a lawyer-lobbyist in Washington and Nashville.
In what is thought to be the trial that launched his movie-making career Fred represented Mary Ragghianti, the woman fired after working undercover with the FBI in an effort to expose then Governor Ray Blanton for selling inmate pardons. He played himself in the movie, “Marie" which told the story of Mary Ragghianti’s successful trial. In 1985, the year that “Marie” was released, he and his wife divorced. During the years that followed he was known for chasing ladies. To this he has said, “I was single for a long time and, yep, I chased a lot of women. And a lot of women chased me -- and those that chased me tended to catch me" (Sullivan).
In 1994 he ran for Al Gore’s vacant seat as a senator in Tennessee. He struggled in the primaries, but had an image makeover and eventually won the election by a huge margin. He ran again in 1996 and easily won. As a Senator he was known for avoiding extreme stances in politics. For example, though a staunch Republican, he would not support laws that outlawed early- term abortions. He also served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is sometimes accused of not doing much during his time on the committee, but Fred rebuffs those accusations saying that while he did not help pass a lot of laws, he did help kill a lot of bad laws.
He left the Senate in 2002 after only serving a little more than one term. He originally planned on running again, saying, “now is not the time for me to leave”, but after the death of his daughter Betsy, Fred stepped down. Fred is also noted for being frustrated with the snail-like workings of the Senate. Later in 2002, Fred married Jeri Kehn. They have two children, 4-year old daughter, Hayden, and 10 month old son, Samuel.
As a man, he is known as a “straight talker.” When asked why he had not officially announced his candidacy he simply replied, “I wasn't around when they made those rules and I'm not abiding by them….We've got plenty of time." (Times 18 August 2007). Long-time friend and fellow lawyer, Lewis Donelson, said "With Fred, what you see is what you get." Adding, "He's very much himself. He knows what he believes in." Donelson also said Fred is a man "who has his own ideas" (Sullivan).
Fred is expected to announce his candidacy around Labor Day. There is likely much more to be printed about his life and political views in the ensuing months, but at least now, if you were like me, you know a little about the background of my man, Fred.

My First Impulse: Attack!! is discourse zero sum?

After randomly selecting Mitt Romney as My Candidate, I was rip roarin' ready to go- ready to join the ranks and spread the good Mitt Word.

But the first thing I noticed is that as soon as I had committed myself to a single candidate, my impulse was to deride and attack the other candidates. A story appeared in the news about John McCain's poor fundraising, and I found myself thinking about how I could attack McCain to build up Romney- and that is exactly the type of thinking and political discourse I wanted to shy away from as part of this experiment.

I would like to think that my first impulse would have been, what is it that's great and uplifting about my candidate that I can share with others, in what way does he add value to our civic system? Instead, it seems like I am hardwired (or trained? By the media or my legal training?) to think of political discourse as zero sum- anything negative about the other guy must boost my guy, and the more good I can spin about my guy, the louder I can say it, the more oxygen I can suck out of the room for the other guy to say good things about himself.

My Guy: Mitt, Family Man and Man of Faith

Like all candidates, there are essentially two types of info about Mitt: 'personal' information e.g. about his personal history, his religious beliefs, his family and his character; 'public' information, e.g. about his policies and political beliefs.

One relevant question is the extent to which those two categories can or should be parsed out as distinct or separate for a candidate for President of the US. Some people argue that the 'private' life of an individual is not relevant to the fitness of as person for the office of president (rewind to this debate circa Clinton and Monica). We have some funny flips on this argument with Mitt- his personal character and family life seem genuinely lovable, perhaps downright impeccably so - he gets lauded all the time for the way he treats his wife and his family, for example. The Boston Globe has the most comprehensive treatment of Mitt's personal history, and it ends up fairly glowing. Naturally, he wants to play up those aspects of his personal life - he wants to argue that private behavior DOES matter. He even recently said as much, when he said to a crowd that he wouldn't embarrass the country like Monica and Bill.

But the one area of Mitt's so-called private life that gets negatively scrutinized by the right and the left is his Mormonism. There are at least four versions of criticisms of Mitt's faith in Mormonism (1) it's not really Christianity (the critique by some evangelicals) (2) if Mitt is irrational enough to believe that an angel gave golden plates to a New Yorker nearly 200 years ago, how can we trust him to handle foreign policy? (3) Mitt's faith is so hierarchical that voting for Mitt is tantamount to voting for Mormonism's leader (this is a rehash of the "Popery" critiques leveled at JFK) and (4) Mormonism is just WEIRD - what's up with the polygamous tradition or the so-called "funny underwear" (as per mainstream media blogger Andrew Sullivan).



So what is a fellow to do? Mitt can't say that his Mormonism is off limits because it is part of his 'private life'- he wants to make private lives part of the debate. In fact, he goes further- he wants religion to be part of the debate, or at least to an extent. The careful position Mitt has constructed is that America wants a 'person of faith' and that he is a person of faith, but that beyond that it is inapprpriate to be bigoted about the particular brand of faith. It's a nuanced approach to how much 'personal' is appropriate, and Mitt will be the test case for what level of personal attack or benefit American voters will give a candidate.