Our friend Stephen Hayes has been on leave from the Weekly Standard writing a biography of Vice President Cheney. Now that he has finished the book he has returned to his duties at the Standard. Steve returns this week in a big way to consider what Paul has dubbed "The Fred factor" in Steve's Weekly Standard cover story "From the Courthouse to the White House?" Steve's long report is full of interesting information and entertainment. Steve summarizes the current interest in Thompson, for example, as follows:

According to an adviser to one of the leading candidates, the rationale for a Thompson run is best illustrated--as so many things are--by The Simpsons. In one episode, Homer Simpson's civic-minded neighbor Ned Flanders tells a large crowd of fellow Springfield citizens that they must choose someone to lead an anticrime campaign in the town.

"Who should lead the group?"

"You," shouts a man from the crowd. The entire mob begins to chant.

"Flanders! Flanders! Flanders!"

When Flanders humbly begins to explain that he doesn't have much experience in such matters, Moe the Bartender cuts him off.

"Someone else!"

The crowd joins in.

"Someone else! Someone else! Someone else!"

One obvious advantage Fred Thompson has is that he's someone else.

That seems on the money to me, but so does this:

If he joins the race for the Republican nomination, and if he campaigns the same way he spoke to me last week, Fred Thompson, a mild-mannered, slow-talking southern gentleman, will run as the politically aggressive conservative that George W. Bush hasn't been for four years. And the actor in the race could well be the most authentic personality in the field.

Thompson seems to recognize that he wins the guy-I'd-want-to-get-a-beer-with primary the moment he announces. He comes across as a regular guy--"folksy" will be the political cliché that attaches to his candidacy--and punctuates explanations of his positions with the kind of off-the-cuff homespun witticisms that Dan Rather spent a career trying to come up with.

And this:

He believes that elements of the CIA were out to get Scooter Libby and his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby, though not the original leaker of the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, was convicted of lying and obstructing justice. "It makes me mad as the devil just to think about it," Thompson says. He had never met Libby when he volunteered to serve on the advisory board of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust. Is Libby innocent? Thompson answers with one word. "Yes."

And this:

[H]e goes on to give a better defense of the White House than anything that has come out of the White House communications shop in four years.

The irony here is that intelligence services had consistently over the years understated the capabilities of enemies and potential enemies. Now, here there was unanimity among the intelligence services, some of whom are supposed to be better than ours. . . . People don't understand intelligence. They don't understand. It's seldom clear. It's often caveated. It's sometimes flat-out wrong. Different people often have different ideas. That's what a president is faced with.

That's about one-tenth of the quote Steve elicited from Thompson on ths subject. You'll want to read the rest of the quote, as well as the rest of the article.

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