Thompson's Backers Check His `Fire in the Belly' for 2008 Race

By Kim Chipman and Julianna Goldman

June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Fred Thompson looks the part, and usually gets it.

Long before he became a Hollywood actor, people offered him roles tailor-made for his imposing stature, his rich baritone and his homespun dignity. Throughout his life, he said in a television interview in March, ``doors have opened for me and I had the sense to walk through them.'' He has ascended without much apparent effort from country lawyer to prosecutor to U.S. senator while building a parallel career as a film and TV actor, notably in the NBC series ``Law & Order.''

Now, the powerful Tennessee Republicans who propelled Thompson, 64, into politics three decades ago want to cast him in the role of a lifetime: president of the United States. The question, some of them say, is whether he wants it badly enough to endure the rigors of a campaign.

``Does he really have the passion, the energy, the fire in the belly to run?'' said former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is advising his fellow Tennessean. ``I believe he does, but we will only know as he gets on the campaign trail.''

A White House run would be the crowning achievement of a life marked by almost uncanny timing, an ability to leverage his working-class roots in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and his formidable presence both in politics and show business.

Providential Help

His career has also been characterized by bouts of what even some allies describe as a detachment that sometimes verges on laziness, and by providential help from influential backers.

Chief among those benefactors is former Republican Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, who hired Thompson as his campaign manager in 1972 and then thrust him onto the national political scene when he brought the young lawyer to Washington to work on the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973.

Baker, ``more than anybody else, is responsible for Fred getting in'' the race this year, said John Seigenthaler, the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville and a friend of Baker's. ``He has said to people, me included, that he was going to push this campaign until Fred told him not to.''

Baker, 81, declined to be interviewed and one of his advisers, Fred Marcum, said his role in Thompson's possible White House run is sometimes overstated. Thompson declined requests for an interview.

Changing Course

Representative Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican who is co- chairman of a ``Draft Fred Thompson'' Internet campaign that received more than 50,000 signatures, said Thompson dismissed the idea of a White House run as recently as January.

Then, in March, 60 of the 62 Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature signed a letter urging him to run. Later that month, he announced that he was considering a candidacy. In a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll in June, Thompson was second only to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani among Republican candidates.

``This is as close to a true draft as I've ever seen,'' said Tom Ingram, a longtime adviser to Thompson and current chief of staff to Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who also is pressing Thompson to run. ``Right now, everyone is begging and pleading Fred to become a candidate.''

The buzz around Thompson, Alexander said, is already giving him a leg up on the other candidates. ``If the fact of Fred Thompson turns out to be half as good as the idea of Fred Thompson, he'll win in a landslide,'' said Alexander, 66.

Red Truck

In Tennessee, Thompson's ability to manage his image proved to be one of his strongest assets. In 1994, he was trailing a Democratic opponent, Representative Jim Cooper, in the race for the seat vacated by then Vice President Al Gore. Thompson told campaign advisers that he wanted to ditch his suits for blue jeans, and began driving around the state in a used red pickup truck, said Bill Lacy, then a political strategist for him.

``Fred changed immediately,'' Lacy said. ``The message didn't change at all, but he was able to create a role for himself and he was very comfortable in that role.''

The truck was credited with helping Thompson beat Cooper. It worked, Ingram said, because it rang true for Thompson, whose father sold used cars in rural Tennessee. ``Fred Thompson was a truck driver long before we got the truck,'' Ingram said.

For now, that red truck is parked behind Thompson's mother's home outside Nashville, with an expired registration and more than 300,000 miles on the odometer. In their March letter, the state legislators urged Thompson ``to take the 'red pickup truck' across America and do what you have always done so well -- win elections.''

Playing the Role

When Thompson took his Senate seat in 1994, he had already played the role of a senator on the screen in the 1993 comedy ``Born Yesterday'' with Melanie Griffith, and there were expectations that he would quickly rise in the Republican leadership. Yet it was the less-celebrated Frist, elected the same year, who wound up leading the party.

Thompson quit the Senate in 2002 with a lackluster record of legislative achievement, and many observers said they believed he was leaving politics for good. Some attributed his decision not to run again to simple boredom, while others said it was prompted by the death of his 38-year-old daughter, Betsy, from an accidental drug overdose.

``It really kind of floored him,'' said James `Chunky' Moore, who has known Thompson since childhood.

Political Combat

Some also wondered whether he had the drive required for political combat. A Republican aide who has played central roles in both Tennessee politics and Washington spoke with Thompson a few years ago about a possible run for governor. The aide said he told Thompson the next governor would have to take on two arduous tasks: fixing the state's health-care system and balancing the budget. Shortly after the conversation, Thompson announced he wouldn't run.

Many who support his presidential run now say Thompson's walking away from politics for a few years may work in his favor by reinforcing his image as a Washington outsider.

That message may need to be fine-tuned: Thompson, who long divided his time between Nashville and Washington when he worked as a lawyer and lobbyist, no longer has a house in Tennessee.

Instead, he and his second wife, Jeri, and their two small children live inside the Washington Beltway, in McLean, Virginia, on the same street as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a home valued at $3.3 million, according to county tax records.

Thompson, whose campaign headquarters are slated to be in Nashville, is said to be looking for a house to buy in Tennessee. ``He needs to get on that,'' said Frist, 55.

Too Tempting

In the end, Thompson may find the prospect of a turn in the world's brightest spotlight too tempting to pass up. High-school friends and teachers in Lawrenceburg recall that Thompson showed an early hunger for public affirmation, particularly on the football field.

``He wasn't a real good football player because he liked to have fun and didn't take it that serious,'' said Garner Ezell, 74, a former assistant coach for the team. ``He was popular and he liked attention, and would do things to get it.''

In one incident recalled by Ezell and others, Thompson appeared to be injured during a game. The coach ran out to see if he was all right and a smiling Thompson greeted him by asking, ``How's the crowd taking it?''

To contact the reporters on this story: Kim Chipman in Washington at kchipman@bloomberg.net ; Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: June 28, 2007 00:02 EDT

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