The Force Will Not Be With Her

Big Hollywood blogger Kurt Schlichter is, I fear, a bit too fond of Sarah Palin for his own good. He wrote yesterday that her abrupt and as-yet unexplained resignation from the Governorship of Alaska may have been prompted by media criticism of her and vicious attacks on her family, but this has made her “more powerful than [her enemies] can possibly imagine.” A cute analogy, especially with the clip from Star Wars. But Schlichter’s Obi-Wan Kenobi analogy is simply not right. I know that Sarah Palin fans want to believe what Schlichter is writing turns out to be true, but wanting it doesn’t make it so.

Soon-to-be-former-Governor Palin is not stronger now than she was before and certainly will not become stronger than her liberal critics can possibly imagine in the future. She is weaker now, not stronger, than she was even a week ago. She will only become weaker once she becomes “Former Governor Palin.” In order to gain power, you need to show that you can use the power you already have effectively. No less a staunch partisan Republican political strategist than Karl Rove agreed with former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that her resignation is a “risky strategy” that has left him “perplexed.”

First, if she’s going to try and build a national campaign starting now, this is a very unorthodox move and consequently, she’s shooting herself in both feet. Three recent examples demonstrate that bailing out of government is a bad way to prepare for a Presidential campaign:

A) Hillary Rodham Clinton. Eight years’ worth of machinations, resume-building, maintenance and upgrades to an already-impressive political machine, and what's more, possibly the most impressive set of political alliances and presumptions of inevitability did not result in President Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton was outdone by then-Senator Obama virtue of the fact that fundamentally, she did not have enough personal executive experience running an enterprise like a Presidential campaign. At best for Palin, she has not yet demonstrated the kind of executive skill necessary to do that. Palin fans will likely bristle at this characterization of Governor Palin, but see my explanation below examples B) and C).

Nor has she been able to convince me that she is capable of personally overseeing the kind of political machine-building that Clinton did during the Bush Administration. Maybe she wouldn't need to if she piggybacks on the "movement," which already exists and already has machinery of its own in place. That seems to be how she catapulted herself onto the stage of state politics several years ago.

B) Fred Dalton Thompson. He didn’t declare for months after the primary season opened. He assembled “virtual” machinery, recording YouTube videos from a small studio in his house. He skipped debates and continued to party like a private citizen. He didn’t network, didn’t fundraise, and took too long to put together a platform on the issues – and when he did get around to doing that, he didn’t look or sound all that different than the guys who had been out on the campaign trail for months. He didn’t win a single delegate and got only eight unelected delegates to commit to him before he released them to McCain.

An unorthodox campaign style with “new machinery” did not produce President Fred Thompson – for all the talk of the “new machinery” Obama assembled, a scandalous amount of his electoral power came from old-fashioned volunteer work, and even more old-fashioned dirty tricks like ballot-box stuffing and polling-place thuggery. What was new about Obama was that he found a new way to build the old-fashioned machinery. What was new about Fred Thompson was that his non-traditional campaign produced non-traditional results.

C) Rudolph William Lewis Giuliani. Remarkable personal charisma and six years’ worth of groundwork raising money for himself and for the political allies he sought as backers was not enough for Rudy! to find purchase in the Republican Party. Too many strange things from his past, too many bad decisions made along the campaign trail. Now, in his case, he did not reverse position on abortion, but he did promise "movement conservatives" that he would appoint "strict constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court, and as we all know, "strict constructionist" is conservative code for "Will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade," something that is so far on top of the conservatives' wish list that they seem willing to forgive nearly anything else a politician or a judge does as long as they do that.

Sarah Palin, too, has outstanding personal charisma and unlike Rudy! she is personally pro-life and does not need to cozy up to the religious right on this issue. Now, I presume that if she is quitting now to lay the groundwork for a run full-time and from a location more convenient than Juneau or Wasilla. She will do the same thing that Rudy! did from 2002 to 2008 by whoring himself out to other candidates to give speeches and lend his political support and fundraising ability to them. Palin, too, can only try to make the right friends by raising money and making campaign appearances for them in 2010. But making very strange decisions – personal, policy, and political – are a pattern that can be found in Sarah Palin’s abbreviated political history, as well. The resignation is only the culmination of a series of odd decisions she's made, from "going maverick" in the middle of the McCain campaign to letting herself get interviewed in front of a working open-air poultry slaughterhouse to demanding new elections for Senator after it seemed to her the voters of Alaska voted wrong. And this bodes very poorly for her abilities as a candidate.

As promised, here is my thesis for Sarah Palin’s unproven executive ability. Sure, Alaska has a balanced budget, but that’s because it makes so damn much money on its excise tax that a fourth-grader could balance the state’s budget. Palin's brief tenure as Governor of Alaska has been highlighted by a number of ethics investigations that found the Governor to have abused her authority but which lacked the teeth to punish her in the face of a generally-friendly Legislature -- the most high profile of which she claimed exonerated her when in fact the exact opposite was true. Also, she presided over the the creation of a natural gas pipeline that had been in the works for four years before she assumed office, vacillated on accepting Federal pork money, and the institution of helicopter wolf hunts (which may make sense if you accept the idea that wolves in Alaska needed to be culled, but it just looks bad and besides, this is hardly a towering accomplishment). She took on some corruption in her own party, which was good, but has been unable to escape the taint of corruption herself. You can find the rumors about how her really nice house got built yourself.

Second, whether there is a scandal or corruption problems with her or not, it looks like she’s stepping down because she has something she wants to hide. You could say, “She wants to protect her family from this evil media machine,” and I’d totally respect that if it were true. But if she refuses to endure the media circus, then that means that she doesn’t want to run for President (at least, in a way which would be reasonably calculated to her actually winning). The fact that it looks like she’s running out of the kitchen because she can’t stand the heat is what’s important, because perception matters more than reality. I’ve heard more than a few rumors that the scandal she is ducking has to do with her time as Mayor of Wasilla rather than as Governor of Alaska, with a deal that looks really similar to the Ted Stevens scandal.

(An aside: Palin didn’t win any points with me for sticking up for Ted Stevens, either. That’s not to say I think the prosecutors handled the case against him well, because they didn’t. Stevens is a free man now because the prosecutors overstepped the case. But to say the prosecutors screwed up the case is not the same thing as saying Stevens was innocent. The evidence strongly suggests he was on the take, and we don’t need a figure of towering, arrogant, unapologetic corruption as a leader in the GOP. We now return to the peroration of your regularly-scheduled jeremiad.)

There were people -- nearly all of them self-identified "movement conservatives" -- who wanted Dan Quayle to run for President in 1996, in 2000 and even still had a few die-hard proponents early in the 2008 cycle. Quayle’s supporters were attracted to the former Vice President for the same sort of visceral reason that they are attracted to Governor Palin now: he was an object of derision and hate by the left and they felt sympathy for him as a whipping boy who didn’t really deserve the abuse he got. This was a reaction to a choice made by the Left. Had the Left not savaged Quayle so thoroughly, the Right would have picked a different avatar.

This was, and still is, bad politics -- don't let the Left pick your candidates for you because they're going to pick the one that they think they can beat easiest. That person, right now, is Sarah Palin. Ever since her resignation, every Democrat I know has said, "I hope this means she does run for President, and I hope you guys are dumb enough to nominate her." This is the political equivalent of the double-dog dare. These Democrats say that not because they fear or despise Palin. (Well, they do despise her, but that's because she's a "gender-traitor," a woman who dares to adhere to a political point of view at variance with the "feminist" constellation of policy positions.) It's because like Republicans, they like winning. And hey're convinced they can beat her.

You may (correctly) think the Democrats are wrong-headed about (many of) their policies, and you may find them (more or less correctly) to be morally bankrupt as a political unit and as represented by their leadership. But don't let that fool you into thinking they're stoooopid.

Dan Quayle was irrelevant in 2000 and even more irrelevant in 2008, and he had the good sense to realize that. He shows up to events, speaks to the rank-and-file faithful, raises some money, and then he goes home. Dan Quayle’s past is Sarah Palin’s future.

Fred Thompson Explains The Bailout

Right said, Fred!

Sarcasm is not a lost art form after all. Almost makes me wish I'd have voted for the guy. Oh, wait, he dropped out before California's primary, too.

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

Six months ago, looking out at the world of politics, I knew a few things for sure:

1. The Republicans had a mess on their hands. No viable leader for the social conservative movement was stepping up to the plate and it looked like the primary was going to be reduced to a five-way slugfest with Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney best-equipped to make it through the long haul. John McCain was out of dough and neither Mike Huckabee nor Fred Thompson were to be taken seriously. It was a wide-open field and no one candidate was going to be able to get the party to unify, for anything.

2. The Democrats had an annointment. This Obama kid, he has promise, but he needs to go be Governor of Illinois for a few terms so he can get ready to run to replace President Clinton in 2016. Because Hillary's got all the money locked up, all the endorsements locked up, all the name recognition and voters will be excited about electing a woman.

3. Iraq was going to be the Republicans' albatross. Ultimately, the Democrats would have a huge advantage in November because the country would still be saddled with an unpopular, bloody, and inconclusive war.

So, how did I do?

1. Huckabee won Iowa and credibility. McCain won pretty much everything after that. Giuliani's strategy turned out to be very poor, and poorly-executed. Romney hung in there and picked up a few wins here and there but people figured out he was a phoney. And Thompson might as well have been James Stockdale, unable to answer the question "Who am I? Why am I here?" With precious little money and in the face of what should have been strong opposition, John McCain effectively sewed things up on February 5. And we haven't heard a word from him since.

2. Obama turned out to have more money than God. Seriously, if Jesus ran for President, he couldn't raise more money from more small donors than Obama. I think you can wire his campaign five bucks a month from your cell phone or something like that. Not only did Obama make it a fight against the Crown Princess, he figured out that a delegate is a delegate and put effort into "red" states to rack up some wins, and never lost hope. Eventually, he overtook her in votes, in delegates, and fundraising. And now it looks like he'll be our next President.

3. Astonishingly, we seem to be winning in Iraq. The Maliki government is standing up and conducting internal military operations with fewer and fewer U.S. advisors; political violence is down although not completely gone; and while they aren't necessarily happy about it, Iraqis are resigned to the idea that their future is now inextricably intertwined with ours. Our "temporary" bases are likely to become permanent. Yes, the country is still politically immature and religious parties and ethnic separatism are significant forces that could tear at its fabric. But it looks like it's finally on its way towards our newly-defined victory conditions. Again, not that you'd know from reading the news.

But the Republicans still have an albatross -- the economy. Distilled to its essence, the GOP is being held to answer for the outrage of paying four dollars a gallon for gasoline. I'm not hearing huge cries for health care reform, tax cuts, or the silly and unwise economic stimulus. People just want to be able to afford to drive to work. Amazingly (in sort of an ominous way), we are starting to reach the point where the allegedly and famously inelastic demand curve for gas is starting to bow, and people are really driving less. Not that the Democrats are going to solve that problem any more than the Republicans have; they haven't a clue. But that's looking like the most likely reason voters will be dissatisfied in November.

Then again, I've been wrong before. Let's revisit this in mid-October, shall we?

What Was That All About?

As expected, Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. He did it a day later than I thought he would. He never really seemed to be in the race, to me -- there were sure a lot of Fred Heads around the Internets but the candidate himself did not seem to be doing the sorts of things that candidates do. In terms of policy, he didn't seem to bring anything to the table that wasn't already there from the other candidates; he had ideological credentials as solid as anyone else's. He had both good sound bites and some thoughtful policy papers but also seemed to want to step away from campaigning to do things like take naps. In one sense, I think he was trying to do a different kind of campaign -- but this cycle has seen that the way national politics is being practiced successfully is to do it more and early, not less and late. Well, Fred Heads, it's over now. Thompson has not endorsed any of his five rivals, so his delegates are now functionally released. I've removed him from the delegate counter.

His Wife Is Smoking Hot, After All

I heard a rumor yesterday that Fred Thompson was going to drop out of the race, after his disappointing showing in South Carolina. He has other things to do:

An Anti-Thompson, Pro-Huckabee Push Poll

The Huckster would do well to remember the Eleventh Commandment.

New Feature and Iowa Results

I'm going to keep track of the estimated delegates gathered by each candidate. It will appear in the right-hand sidebar. Looking at the delegate count, Obama's victory does not seem as decisive as press reports would have you believe. And while I called a narrow Romney victory in Iowa, it turns out that Huckabee had a fairly impressive (9%) margin of victory there. This suggests that in other evangelical-heavy states, like South Carolina, he will also do well.

Note that these delegate projections are just that -- projections. The actual pledging of delegates from Iowa does not happen until several months from now. The Wyoming county conventions which will take place on Friday will produce similar "soft" delegate commitments; binding delegate selection there does not take place for several more days. "Hard" pledged delegates will come out of New Hampshire on Tuesday. (I keep on thinking the NH primary was moved to a day other than Tuesday, for some reason, but that's just not right.)

So the delegate results from Iowa (don't forget, all of this electioneering is aimed at getting delegates to the national conventions to vote for the various candidates) will be more or less like this:

Democrats			Republicans
Obama	16		Huckabee	17
Clinton	15		Romney	12
Edwards	14		McCain	3
			Thompson	3
			Paul	2

But that's not the whole picture at the moment. Other "hard" pledging of delegates or readily-identifiable delegate commitments -- Bill Clinton, for example, is automatically a "superdelegate" to the Democratic National Convention (as are just under a quarter of the voting delegates overall). Gee, who do you think he'll vote for? So too are many of the candidates themselves automatically delegates by virtue of their holding elected office and we have to assume that they'll vote for themselves. This is more of a factor for the Democrats than the Republicans, and it explains why so many delegates are already pledged to Hillary Clinton. But there are some non-Iowa delegates out there who have already committed to some other candidates, so this affects them both.

I note that a few minor players -- Joe Biden and Chris Dodd -- are dropping out after Iowa. They've not yet released their delegates to anyone so far as I know. Everyone, myself included is anticipating Fred Thompson to drop out soon, too. He may hang in there until after New Hampshire, though. I'm still predicting a significant McCain win in the Granite State. Rudy Giuliani will have to wait for Florida before having a chance of showing significant wins -- not that he has a choice.

I'm particularly tickled to see Mitt Romney having spent... what? Seven million dollars in Iowa? To come in second place? I'm kind of sad to think that some of the reason for that is overt religious prejudice, because I don't think anyone's religion should be held against them unless it teaches bizarre moral imperatives. But at the same time, the man is a huge fake and this puts his campaign in some trouble. He needs to win New Hampshire now. And let me check... Ah yes. McCain is leading Romney there by an average of five points.

So stay tuned, junkies, this is going to get real interesting in a week.

And They're Off!

The Iowa Caucuses are today. Hizzonner is currently polling in fifth place in Iowa despite still being the national leader; Huckabee and Romney are in a dead heat for first place. After Friday, though, no one will care at all about Iowa, because the attention will shift suddenly to New Hampshire, with its primary on Tuesday. Oh, and Wyoming will have its convention on Saturday, in defiance of national GOP rules, but that will attract some attention.

My prediction, based on nothing more than my observations from the media, is that Romney will squeak ahead of Huckabee tomorrow in Iowa. McCain comes in third, which is the "momentum" place for everyone who isn't Huckabee or Romney to be. Romney should also win Wyoming. But then McCain will win New Hampshire, and eventually, South Carolina will split nearly evenly between Huckabee and Romney, not at all unlike Iowa should tomorrow night.

So the net winner of all of these early but lower-stake pots will be Mitt Romney. That will be the effective end of the Huckabee campaign, since he lacks the money and machinery to compete in the big states, and his Christian credentials are only going to go so far outside of the Bible Belt.

The real question is, will this create enough "momentum" that voters in Florida and the Super-Duper Tuesday states will start to to care about Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina? Will enough Republicans voting for Romney -- or at least, the appearance of enough voters going for him -- carry the day for the Governor? Or are voters in places like Alaska, Illinois, and California going to simply disregard the early states and make independent decisions? Giuliani is currently leading the polls in all of the big states -- he's "all in" for Super-Duper Tuesday, and he's the only one with the money and machinery to compete with Romney -- and he has that 9/11 thing that I think he's mentioned once or twice.

Giuliani's is a high-risk strategy, but not an insane risk by any means. The way that the delegates are selected suggests to me that Giuliani will wind up with at least a plurality of delegates after Super-Duper Tuesday and therefore be the "leader" moving to the contests in the second half of the primaries.

Then (speaking of candidates going "all in") there's the other wild card. Thompson is still in it but not polling well enough anywhere to be anything more than a spoiler -- but for who? Who is the second choice of Thompson supporters? This is important because it's likely that at some point between now and February 5, Thompson is going to find he doesn't have enough traction, and he'll bow out.

Where do his supporters go? My guess is their second choice is probably John McCain more than any of the other three. It also seems most likely that Thompson, who publicly places a high value on being plain-spoken and direct, would find McCain the most palatable of the remaining four candidates should he withdraw. But if McCain's been effectively squeezed out by then, it looks like a tossup to me.

Maybe he'll be mischievous and release his delegates to "vote their consciences" at the convention, and it will wind up brokered. Oh, what a delightful prospect a brokered GOP convention would be! The whole thing is a big, complicated, delicious mess. There are no good guys, just some bad guys, and the flag drops tonight.

The Democrats look positively boring by comparison. Republicans: cry "havoc" and let slip the dogs of war!

Push Polling Begins

Apparently, someone has commissioned a push poll for Iowa and New Hampshire, attacking Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith.  Camps Giuliani and McCain have both denied involvement in no uncertain ways.  No one apparently has thought to ask the Thompson campaign.  Weirder yet, the calls seem to originate from Utah, of call places, and the company to whom the calls have been traced back denies being involved in any “polling” operation, legitimate or otherwise, in either state; an executive of that company has made substantial donations to Romney’s campaign.  Some have suggested that Romney commissioned the poll himself to garner sympathy, but I have a hard time believing that, too.  The truth will out eventually, and whoever is behind it will deserve very significant egg on his face.

Good Questions For Anyone

Over at Volokh, readers have responded to Fred Thompson's calls for questions on his policy platform with some damn tough questions:

1. What is your view of civil asset forfeiture in the absence of a criminal conviction? Would you make any changes in current executive branch policies, or propose any changes in federal forfeiture laws?
2. Do you believe that Gonzales v. Raich was correctly decided? If you were President, would your Department of Justice take action against patients and providers of medical marijuana who were acting in compliance with state law?
3. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, would your commitment to federalism compel you to veto a congressional bill banning abortion? Or in a post-Roe world would you seek to ban abortion by federal law regardless of the wishes of the individual states?
4. Which Attorney General do you most admire? Why?
5. Which, if any, federal gun control laws do you support repealing?
6. You were instrumental in securing passage of McCain-Feingold. Have your views on either the law's effectiveness or constitutionality changed in the years since it was passed, and what would you do about the continually-increasing purview of the Federal Elections Commission? Would you favor new legislation to protect the Internet or non-profits from McCain-Feingold?

As one reader points out, as phrased, most of these questions are too arcane to be meaningful to voters who are not also lawyers or deep policy wonks. And there are good answers available -- whether the candidate being asked these questions is Fred Thompson, some other Republican, or a Democrat:

1. The government should use every weapon available to fight the war on drugs. Civil forfeitures have a lower standard of proof than criminal convictions, to be sure, but don't forget that the government still must show it's more likely than not that a person has taken drug money before the forfeiture takes place.

2. (Republicans) Yes, the case was correctly decided. Although the states can implement whatever laws they want about drugs, there is a Federal interest in regulating drugs, too. This case may not be one of a recreational user or a massive drug dealer, but it's important to demonstrate that these drugs are illegal to deter other people from trying to sell drugs to our children. It's also important to fight drugs on the demand side as well as the supply side, and enforcing the law like this reduces both demand and supply. (Democrats) We have to reserve the right to enforce our drug laws against serious criminals, and that means we need Federal anti-drug laws. As President, I would direct federal law enforcement authorities to review all state laws to see if they were really carving out only compassionate-use situations or were just a cover for recreational use; if it turns out that it's just getting a doctor's note to cover for kids getting high, then yes, I'd authorize the use of Federal resources to go after these users. But I'd focus on big dealers and the most poisonous of the drugs out there.

3. (Republicans other than Giuliani) Overturning Roe is only one step in the process. For a while after Roe is overturned, some states will permit abortion and others will outlaw it. As President, I would use my political power to urge leaders in the various states to adopt laws that were protective of human life. (Giuliani) If Roe were to be overturned, then the question of abortion would go to the states. If I were President when that happened, I would urge the states to very carefully consider all of the issues -- the moral issues, the legal issues, the tough decisions facing a woman deciding whether to bear a child or not -- before making a decision. But at that point, it would be for the states. For myself, I'd like to see states pass laws that would make it easier for adoption to take place as an alternative to abortion. (Democrats) If Roe were to be overturned, I would lead a state-by-state effort to preserve a woman's right to decide what to do with her own body, and at the same time pursue a Constitutional amendment reinstating that right once and for all.

4. Edward Bates, who was Abraham Lincoln's Attorney General and urged the emancipation of slaves in the south. Bates saw that it was the right thing to do morally, it was the right thing to do legally, and it was the right thing to do to help end the civil war. It took a while, but eventually he convinced his President to follow through on the promise of full equality for all Americans.

5. (Republicans) Most of them. Gun control should be left to the states, and the states need to abide by the Constitution. There should be a system in place to protect against criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns, but like it or not, the Constitution gives law-abiding citizens the right to keep and bear arms and as President, I would use my power to see to it that the government enforces that right. (Democrats) None of them. The production and sale of assault weapons, Saturday night specials, and other cheap, lethal weapons is a national disgrace and a threat to our children that some Americans have to face every day and every night. We owe it to these people to take that fear away from them so our streets and homes can be safe again.

6. McCain-Feingold is intended to reduce corruption in politics. The internet is a place where politics can happen -- and Americans who comment on political events on the Internet are exercising their Constitutional rights, and we should encourage that. I do not interpret McCain-Feingold to apply to individual Americans who simply comment on political issues; it only comes in to play when the website gets used to raise money for a candidate or a cause. At that point, it becomes a special interest group, and it should be regulated like all special interest groups -- that is, by requiring disclosure of where the money came from and where it's going to.

But these are all long, wonky answers to long, wonky questions. And it's unlikely that any candidate -- especially Fred Thompson, who seems to be running a light-on-substance, heavy-on-personality campaign -- would give deep thought to the questions or the answers. I like wonky answers to questions, but that's not how elections are won. And if the Message For The Day is, for instance, the candidate's bold new direction for America's foreign policy, it's entirely likely that the answer to every question would be to support the troops, get them home successfully and safely, and to increase America's prestige in the world.

Correction

I wrote before about Jeri Thompson, Presidential non-candidate Fred Thompson’s smoking-hot wife and the subject of the “ogling” non-controversy.  Now, it turns out I got a detail wrong (although it also turns out I’m in plenty of good company): apparently, Jeri Thompson is not a lawyer.  She worked at a law firm, but in the capacity of a PR consultant, the same as when she worked for Burson Marsteller (one of the largest PR houses in the country).  She may be very smart and Thompson and his non-campaign staff insist that she’s more than a trophy wife, but she isn’t licensed to practice law.

Fred Thompson: Lawyer-Candidate

An interesting bit from Fred Thompson on the lawyer as a political candidate.  Much of it is biographical and designed to encourage political support for his candidacy (interestingly, Right Said Fred’s website does not describe Thompson’s positions on any political issues), but I commend the link for a concept that Thompson underlines:  A lawyer is not to be identified with his client.  I am not my clients; my job is to advocate for their positions, whether I would take those positions or not.  Obviously, there are limits; I cannot suborn perjury or undermine the legal system or the Constitutional system of government itself, although I can argue in good faith for a change the law to improve it (which I have only rarely had to do and never succeeded at doing).  Anyway, it’s worth remembering as we consider that the top tier of candidates for the Presidency are all lawyers:  Hillary Clinton (Yale J.D., 1973), Barack Obama (Harvard J.D., 1991), and John Edwards (University of North Carolina J.D., 1977), Rudy Giuliani (NYU J.D., 1968), Fred Thompson (Vanderbilt J.D., 1967), and Mitt Romney (Harvard J.D., 1975).

Fred, You're Getting Us All In Trouble

It all started with a throwaway joke by Joe Scarborough on his punditry show on MSNBC about Jeri Kehn, “Right Said” Fred Thompson’s smokin’ hot wife.

Suddenly, it seems the whole blogosphere is aware of the fact that not only is Thompson married to a woman fourteen years younger than himself, but that the Tennessee Stud himself seems to enjoy looking at her body because he finds her attractive. Apparently this is a bad thing, and so is commenting on it.

Commenting about how you're not supposed to comment on that, though, is fair game: Helen Reynolds warns men to protect their “right to leer” and Ann Althouse invites self-aware men to (politely) leer away, at least at their own smokin’ hot wives.

Now, there would be plenty of other things to commend the lovely Ms. Kehn for. And we can acquit her of Wonkette’s accusation that she is merely a trophy wife. She’s an attorney and a media consultant who has worked for the Republican National Committee and the Senate Republican Conference. She’s clearly no dummy. She and “Right Said” Fred have had two children together and they met at a church in Illinois, which all seems very proper and "family values" Republican to me (yes, I know that Senator Thompson divorced his first wife).

But no one – not the feminists upset with Thompson leering at her and not the conservatives stampeding to defend him – seems to care that this woman has a career and an identity of her own separate from her husband. They’re all worried about her ample breasts and whether “Right Said” Fred should be enjoying looking at them publicly (or privately, or at all).

Well, damn. Now I’m in trouble, too and I guess I’ll just have to add this to the long list of reasons why I’ll never be President. I think my wife is smokin’ hot, I check her out when we’re doing stuff around the house, and I tell her that I think he’s attractive often. I guess maybe I’m supposed to think she’s attractive but keep that opinion to myself? (Seems to me that she'd like hearing that her husband finds her attractive.) Or I’m not supposed to consider her attractiveness, ever, and instead I should love her for her other merits as a person? (Which I do, but why should that exclude me from finding her attractive, too?) Or I’m not supposed to think she’s attractive at all? Come on, a husband is supposed to be attracted to his wife! Why should "Right Said" Fred be any different than me?

In truth, it seems that there are actually very few left-wing sites that I can find that are commenting about this. There are, however, a ton of right-wing sites that are dogpiling on the idea that the left is critical of Thompson having a sexy, younger wife. By the way, in the picture, I don’t think Fred Thompson is really leering at his wife. It looks to me like they’re sharing a joke at some social function.

This is what it looks like when a man leers at Fred Thompson’s wife. Back off, Wolfowitz, you're in enough trouble already.

Fred Thompson on Federalism

I have initially been moderately discomfited but at the same time fascinated with the phenomenon of Fred Thompson being wooed by social conservatives to seek the Presidency. Note that Thompson has still not even so much as formed an exploratory committee and his current early-season popularity with GOP voters is largely a reflection of dissatisfaction with the socially tolerant politics that the current front-runners are bringing to the table.

It's facile, though, to suggest that this much sustained excitement and interest can have gone unnoticed, and Thompson has been making moves that seem to be clearing the way for his path to seek the nomination. At the same time, it's clear that Thompson's a pretty smart guy, and he must realize that he needs to reach out to more than just social conservatives to actually win the nomination. So, he writes in National Review Online this little bit, nicely calculated to appeal to Republicans like me, who care less about social issues and more about seeing things get done in the right way by people with principles:

Republicans have struggled in recent years, because they have strayed from basic principles. Federalism is one of those principles. It is something we all give lip service to and then proceed to ignore when it serves our purposes. [¶] Adhering to the principles of federalism is not easy. As one who was on the short end of a couple of 99-1 votes, I can personally attest to it. Federalism sometimes restrains you from doing things you want to do. You have to leave the job to someone else — who may even choose not to do it at all. However, if conservatives abandon this valued principle that limits the federal government, or if we selectively use it as a tool with which to reward our friends and strike our enemies, then we will be doing a disservice to our country as well as the cause of conservatism.

It's worth noting that Thompson at least claims to have put his money where his mouth is on this issue, and that he does seem to continue to take heat from some conservatives for voting against the party line because of federalism principles. I've not looked in depth at all of his voting record, but his article was mainly about tort reform. This is (or at least it ought to be) almost purely a state-level debate; the Federal government properly should have little to say about tort law in most situations. Thompson should be commended for being willing to swim against the tide and stand on Constitutional grounds rather than doing what is politically popular (at least within his party).

It's also worth noting that Thompson, as have many conservative luminaries before him, is critical of the way that Republicans have chosen to govern in recent years. So I feel better about the possibility of a Thompson candidacy now for two reasons -- first, he's made a creditable case for himself as being willing to defend and fight for his principles against all comers, and second, his principles seem to have a substantial root in an understanding of the Constitution, which is one of those things that I happen to think is very good and worth defending.

Tennessee Stud

A few thoughts at Oval Office 2008 about the Fred Thompson phenomenon, for those of you who come here for the politics.