Mitt Romney, who's been running since dinosaurs ruled the Earth, thinks so,
though he is more threatened by Thompson than his better-known rivals are.
In response, Romney is running ads touting his "energy" and is whispering
through surrogates that Thompson's lethargy is his Achilles' heel.
I'm not so sure. The laziness charge was always an inside-baseball criticism
among politicos. Thompson doesn't have a lazy man's resume. Moreover, he can
easily rebut the charge by simply reminding primary voters "that's what they
said about Reagan."
And, like Reagan, Thompson can use his personality to his advantage. His
charm stems from his persona as the anti-candidate. Like his Arthur Branch
character on NBC's sagging "Law and Order," Thompson's appeal is that he
doesn't say 10 words when eight will do (as opposed to, say, Sen. Joe Biden,
who says 38,000 words when eight will do).
Romney wants to bring the slide rules and PowerPoint projectors of Wall
Street to the White House. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani wants to
re-create his whirlwind transformation of the "ungovernable city" on a
national stage. And John McCain, at least rhetorically, promises to bring
Teddy Rooseveltian vigor to the White House.
Meanwhile Thompson seems content to sit on his porch whittling a piece of
wood with his pocketknife while offering pearls of wisdom out of an old
Bartles & Jaymes commercial. It's all a bit hokey and canned, to be sure.
But if Thompson's back-to-basics rhetoric proves to be more than schmaltz,
it could be very popular with conservatives.
Activism and energy in the Oval Office have not always been conservative
priorities. Applying the best practices of the private sector to government,
as Romney wants to do, is certainly one kind of reform. But trimming the
responsibilities of government to a few important and constitutional
functions would also constitute real reform. Right now, the only bandwagon
for a message even remotely like that is the Ron Paul campaign, and
unfortunately, that bandwagon has no brakes. It long ago barreled past
conservatism to swampy territory outside the borders of common sense.
Thompson could be different. While all the other candidates have a "can-do"
personality, Thompson has a "won't-do" personality. And that's something
many of us think has long been missing from the White House. |