As I live blogged yesterday, I enjoyed Fred Thompson's line about how, "It was getting a little boring without me.”
It came right at the end of the debate, and allowed him to end on a humorous high note.
But, in truth, yesterday's debate was the most boring debate, so far. And the truly interesting parts (which were rare) did not involve him ...
Still, as I wrote earlier, I think Thompson "won," in the sense that he did what he needed to do (and frankly, he did exactly what his campaign manager told us he needed to do).
There is one Thompson meme I want to try my best to knock down. A lot of pundits have been saying that, since Fred spent all this time preparing to get in the race, he should have been able to hit the ground at full speed.
But things never work out that way. The only way to fully prepare for something, is to get in the game. A football player can spend a ton of time in the weight room, or watching film, but he won't be up-to-speed until he plays a couple of games.
Politics is the same. The other candidates have five debates under their belts. We shouldn't have expected Fred to start out in game shape ...