Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Fred Thompson for President

Fred Dalton Thompson, Next President of the United States (or so I hope) Arthur Branch for President? Yes please!

Fred Dalton Thompson was on Fox News Sunday over the weekend (transcript) where he announced he is considering running for President. Due to the goodness that is TiVo-eque devices, I didn't watch FNS until tonight but I come away from my evening's viewing thinking "wow."

Thompson isn't particularly charismatic but I'm not sure I have ever come away agreeing with the positions of an interviewed politician more than I did with Thompson. My inner-Libertarian is deeply disgusted by his support of McCain-Feingold but my inner-social-conservative is all sorts of excited.

In truth, if I were in a position to hand pick the next President of the United States, I'd pick Newt Gingrich. Over the last two years, literally every time I've heard Gingrich talk - whether in speeches (highly recommended for any thinking American: 1, 2, 3, 4) or on TV, even if I haven't come away agreeing with him, I have come away thinking "Gingrich knows the problems America faces and has clear solutions for them."

Unfortunately (and frankly, I honestly do think this is unfortunate for the United States), there are probably more people who strongly dislike Gingrich than dislike Hillary Clinton. (And, strangely, most people react the same way — "Newt Gingrich?! You seriously like him? Didn't he... err, what did he ... didn't he do something awful?" — and, no, frankly, he didn't.)

But Thompson doesn't have that negative stigma. He's politically experienced (having served about as many years in the Senate as Obama and Hillary combined) yet his credentials to be considered an "outsider" are at least as strong as Obama's: He's been out of the Senate for five years, people know him primarily for his acting, etc., etc.

And hey, what American in the post-9/11 world doesn't want a "Law and Order" President? Put me down for the Arthur Branch / Jack McCoy ticket, please. (Or even better: Branch / Carmichael, '08!)

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