House of Eratosthenes

Sometimes, the nature of a complaint is much less important than how the complaint came to be. Some complaints materialize because they’re so important you can’t avoid them…some complaints come under consideration because someone was looking for a complaint to have. Imagine yourself as half of a married couple buying a car. You’re ready to sign and your spouse says hey — we discussed doing something we can’t do in this vehicle. Maybe it’s going off-road, and this isn’t a four wheel drive model. Maybe it’s driving the kids somewhere, and you can’t have a DVD player in the back seat. That’s in a completely different light, regardless of the substance of the complaint, than something like “I was looking for a complaint to have, since I have a hidden agenda I’m not willing to admit to you, and finally I stumbled across this thing I’d like you to take seriously even though I don’t.”

…which is exactly the nature of complaints against my favorite candidate. They’re all stupid complaints. They exist simply for the purpose of being there…because someone flailed around, looking for bad things to say about Fred, and finally settled on something that might be silly, but at least is better-n-nothin’. He entered late. He looks tired. He isn’t a Senator anymore. His wife is too hot. He made some bad movies.

This election has, among other candidates, an antisemite who regularly opposes things because they’re ostensibly contrary to the “Constitution,” without ever offering anything resembling an argument about how such things are in any way incompatible with the Constitution. Among those things, are efforts to safeguard the national security. So indirectly, this campaign has turned into a debate about whether national defense is constitutional…do we really give a rat’s ass whether one of the other candidates has a much younger wife or made some mediocre movies?

But the one complaint against Thompson that might possibly have some relevance to it — and in conceding that, by no means am I abandoning my contention that it has been vastly overplayed — is this assertion that he lacks ambition. Well if he does, then ambition must be defined as something short of ambition to pulverize. Because time after time, when Fred engages something, he engages to win. To beat. To maul. To grind into the ground. And then beat some more…eviscerate…rip the sinew from bone, grind the whole thing into dust to butter his bread…finis. No need for a tie-breaking rematch. The man has a long fuse, but he simply doesn’t believe in warning shots, and that makes him the very picture of what the country needs now.

Fred’s peace plan is to wait awhile before engaging the fight. Once the fight is engaged, it’s a quick one. He’s done this time after time; it is his style.

And in this column, he takes on the whole “lack of ambition” argument. It’s like watching a stick of butter gobbled up by a high-powered kitchen blender. Really high powered. Like some Tool Time contraption powered by a 10HP Briggs & Stratton ripped out of a rider lawnmower.

Just watch this guy go to work, and imagine this kind of dignified calm coupled with “in it to win it” in the Oval Office — exactly where it belongs.

My only problem with you and why I haven’t thrown all my support behind you is that I don’t know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?
:
I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly. I’m not sure in the world we live in today it’s a good thing if a president has too much fire in the belly. I approach life differently than a lot of people. People, I guess, wonder how I’ve been as successful as I’ve been in everything that I’ve done. I won two races in TN by 20 point margins in a state that bill Clinton carried twice. I’ve never had an acting lesson. I guess that’s obvious by people who’ve watched me…

When I did it, I did it. Wasn’t just a lark. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well. But I’ve always been a little more laid back than most. I’m only consumed by very, very few things. Politics is not one of them. The welfare of our country and our kids and grandkids is one of them.

If people really want in their president super type-a personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they win the presidency of the united states, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain’t that guy. So I hope I’ve discussed that and didn’t talk you out of anything. I honestly want – I can’t imagine a worse set of circumstances [than] achieving the Presidency of the United States under false pretenses. I go out of my way to be myself.

Ambition, it turns out, is a word that benefits from a variety of different definitions. According to some of those definitions, Fred’s got none of it; according to others, he’s got all of it. We need as much as we can get of what Fred’s got, and none at all of what he has not.

[…] [Discuss This Post with MKFreeberg at House of Eratosthenes] See also: Hot Air Share Article […]
- Webloggin - Blog Archive » Fred Thompson Responds to Overplayed ‘Lack of Ambition’ Complaint | 12/31/2007 @ 17:54

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On AmbitionMonday, December 31st, 2007

On Ambition
Monday, December 31st, 2007