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Thompson in 2000?The state’s senior senator muses out loud about the presidency (and his likely rivals).by Jackson Baker
“Do you think Gore’s really going to run?” responded the lanky, laconic six-feet-plus former lawyer/lobbyist/actor whom, for roughly a decade, Hollywood had cast over and over again when an authority figure was needed for this or that melodrama or action film. He got his laugh, and he got his meaning across. Fred Thompson – 56 last Wednesday (on the birthday he shares not only with Clinton but with transsexual tennis star Rene Richards ) – is letting himself be measured for the job while he takes his own measure of his not-so-secret interest in the presidency. “Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think you have to run for president for 15 years. Or even four years,” Thompson said, indulging perhaps in a subtle dig at both Gore and another presidential wannabe from Tennessee, fellow Republican Lamar Alexander. (The former governor, an unsuccessful aspirant in 1996 who continues to campaign for the presidency, seemed to be in the senator’s sights again later on when Thompson observed that his own claims to national leadership might be better judged by his actions in Congress than if he spent “two years in Iowa talking about abortion.” Alexander, mired at 3 percent in the opinion polls so far, is a frequent visitor to both Iowa, an early caucus state, and New Hampshire, which traditionally holds the first primary in a presidential year.) “So I’m going to wait till the end of this year, the first part of next year, to look around, to see how I feel about it [the presidency],” Thompson told the Chamber audience. “I think the man and the times have to come together – frankly, just the way they did when I first decided to run for office in 1994. We are living in unusual times, to say the least. We’ve got to see what the country needs, where we need to go, where the country needs leadership. I do think more than ever before that’s a tremendous sacrifice. You may be sacrificing the rest of your life in some respects.” Having reasoned his way that far into it, Thompson seemed sobered by the very weight of the prospect. He paused, then tossed off what sounded like a disclaimer: “We don’t feel in this country, quite frankly, that we need strong leadership right now. I think most people feel that we’re doing just fine without Washington. And anybody in it.” Except that events of the day belied that latter premise and underscored the importance of presidential action. On his way over to the Yacht Club, said Thomp-son, he had learned about the air strikes ordered on suspected terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan that very day by President Clinton. Dutifully, when first asked about the air strikes by the media as he arrived at the Yacht Club, Thompson had fallen in behind Clinton. “I think the president did the right thing, and I urge him to continue in that vein,” he said. But he took note of some of the skepticism concerning Clinton’s motives and, while disassociating himself from it, said, “Once again, this reminds us of the president’s credibility, and how he has to regain credibility with the American people. In many respects he’s not credible.” In point of fact, though, while the current full-court-press investigation of the president (and his credibility) by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr gratifies most Republicans, it presents Thompson with some unusual complications. Virtually alone among prominent Republicans, he was critical of the original Whitewater investigation when it was first initiated in 1994 – at a time when Thompson himself was a first-time candidate for the Senate. Back then, Thompson worried aloud about how the Whitewater probe might weaken the presidency and – at least partly on the basis of his own experience as chief minority counsel during the Senate Watergate investigation of 1973-74 – decried what he saw as an increasing tendency to “criminalize” American politics by seeking to overturn election results through court processes. Asked on Thursday whether he still held to that view, Thompson proved cagey. “Under the special circumstances of today, I would prefer not to use that term [“criminalization”]. It would be hard to do so without being misunderstood.” And, when he was asked whether the current probe was an unwarranted invasion of Clinton’s privacy, as the president had suggested in his TV address of last week, Thompson was unsympathetic: “When you have a public official involved with a public employee on public premises, with other public employees testifying to publicly funded agencies, then I would say we have a right to ask questions.” There was one conspicuous flashback to his 1994 position, however. Thompson remains dubious about the proliferation of special prosecutors under the Independent Counsel Act, in effect from 1978 to 1992 and reauthorized in 1994. Noting that the law would come up for reauthorization again next year, the senator said, “We went 200 years without having one.” He reminded his listeners that both the Watergate prosecution of President Richard Nixon and a subsequent investigation of possible conflicts of interest in President Jimmy Carter’s peanut holdings were carried out by special prosecutors authorized on an ad hoc basis by Congress. But then came the independent counsel statute – and the deluge. “We’ve had the Walsh [Iran-Contra] and Ken Starr situations,” said Thompson, who professed himself appalled “at the idea of spending so much money directed at one source.” The “major culprit” in all this was the press, he said, with their penchant for turning investigations into “Who won?/Who lost?” situations. “Starr, for example, would be judged the historical loser if he concluded the president was not guilty.” The media-imposed win/lose syndrome had affected his own 1997 Senate hearings into campaign-finance abuses, Thompson said. “I was actually going to have hearings before I made up my mind. People couldn’t understand it.” Ironically, said Thompson, the area of campaign financing was one which, more than most others, might require an independent counsel under the present statute. (Attorney General Janet Reno has been under serious pressure – both from GOP sources in Congress and from various law-enforcement officials – to name such a counsel, whose scope would likely include suspected fund-raising abuses by both Clinton and Gore.) But the independent counsel statute contained its own built-in abuses, Thompson said, taking a few more rhetorical forays off the GOP reservation. “We’ve got to answer some questions about the statute. We’ve got to the answer the question of whether we want the president to be served civilly when he’s being president. I have a problem with that. The president is not above the law, but he is the only guy with his finger on the button. Do we want a president to be sued while he’s in office for things he did before? All that can have an impact.” The impact of Thompson – who also discussed such issues as the need to find a “third way” between socialized and market-based medicine – might best be gauged by the response Thursday of an appreciative female listener in the Chamber group: “You’re like Sara Lee. Nobody does it like Fred Thompson. I think you should run for president.” Applause greeted the remark.
Sisson, a Republican like his successor, was often a swing member on the commission and a catalyst for initiatives by members of both the Democratic and Republican factions. Loeffel’s campaign indicated that she is likely to adhere fairly closely to established GOP positions. A possible battle is shaping up for the chairmanship of the commission, with Republican Buck Wellford and Democrat Shep Wilbun both seeking the right to succeed outgoing chairman Tommy Hart. Time was when the chairmanship was alternated year by year between a black Democrat and a white Republican, but that practice ceased after the 1995-96 chairmanship of Julian Bolton, whose tenure saw a number of stormy confrontations along racial and political lines. Since then Mark Norris and Hart, both Republicans, have been elected. The GOP has a 7-6 voting edge on the commission. Calvin Williams, administrative assistant to the commission for the last four years, was elected executive assistant to the body Monday, succeeding Joe Cervetti, who is retiring after 30 years in county government. Williams will be succeeded as the commission’s administrative assistant by county budget manager Grace Hutchinson.
On Tuesday, September 8th, House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh of Covington and other members of the House Democratic leadership will be co-sponsors of a $100-a-head fund-raiser for McQuain at the home of longtime Democratic power broker Bill Farris on Sweetbrier Road. Former Rep. Dan Byrd, who held the seat until retiring in the
1996 election season, is also supporting McQuain. |
he president and I share a birthday, and we decided not to exchange
presents this year,” said U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, not long
after he set foot in Memphis last Thursday. And just before he
decamped from the River Terrace Yacht Club following the last
of several interviews, speeches, briefings, what-have-you that
he lent himself to on that extraordinary news day, he did a reprise
on the theme. “Bill Clinton and I share a birthday,” said Tennessee’s
senior senator, “but we didn’t exchange greetings.”
The September 14th meeting of the Shelby County Commission will
see significant changes in personnel and leadership. Gone will
be retiring Commissioner Pete Sisson, who received some fillips
from his fellows at Monday’s commission meeting (praise for his
integrity, the name plaque from his parking spot, some catered
barbecue, and a cake). Sisson will be succeeded next month as
commissioner from District 1, Position 1 by the newly elected
Marilyn Loeffel.