Opinion
As a politician, actor is unknown
WASHINGTON -- In politics, "new" is usually good and "familiar" is usually boring.
So the actor and former Republican senator from Tennessee, Fred Thompson, is creating much political buzz with his late almost-entry into the 2008 presidential sweepstakes. Barely lifting a finger, he parachuted smack into the top tier of the 10-candidate field, running third in some polls and actually tying with the front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, in one.
If you are a traditional Republican, what's not to like here? During his eight years in the Senate, Thompson was certifiably conservative, but never a scary ideologue. The National Journal ranked him as the 21st most conservative Republican, putting him toward the rightish center of his party.
Thompson does not plan to officially enter the race until next month, although he already has a campaign Web site, a batch of veteran political staffers and a busy fundraising operation. He has resigned from his famous, longstanding role as the gruff, savvy district attorney on "Law and Order" -- and good thing, too, considering the conflict of interest it presented.
In real life, Thompson has not been a champion of enforcing the law when it came to Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and lying under oath. Thompson unequivocally endorses a pardon for Libby, who was part of a White House cover-up of efforts to discredit an Iraq war critic by exposing his wife as a covert CIA employee.
Thompson benefits from a restlessness in the GOP, a yearning for the excitement conservative party stalwarts do not feel from the current field.
But Thompson's main attraction -- and potential problem -- is that he is basically a political unknown, apart from his "Law and Order" fame. His personality is distinct, with a Southern down-home drawl that is big in the Old Confederacy but off-putting in cities elsewhere. He is an actor, and because Ronald Reagan proved that an actor can handle that biggest public role of all, ability to act has become a regular qualification for the presidency.
And he is big. At 6 feet, 6 inches, he is a burly figure who towers over most people, men as well as women. That visual impact imparts stature, whether deserved or not. Ask past presidential candidates if height matters. They know it can, such as in debates.
Jimmy Carter was so much shorter than Ronald Reagan that he insisted the cameras filming their 1980 debate be located at a distance. That way the height comparison would not be obvious.
But Reagan was too clever for Carter. At the end of the debate, he unhooked his microphone and walked over to Carter, still rooted to the stage with his own microphone, and conspicuously bent over to him to shake his hand. A polite, politically savage gesture.
When Vice President George H.W. Bush ran against Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, the Dukakis camp was ready with a sneaky play. At the last minute, staffers rushed onto the stage with a mound covered in the same flooring as the rest of the stage. They cut out the portion of the floor where Dukakis was to stand so that he could be on an invisible, raised platform and seem taller than he really was. A box would, of course, have addressed the same height problem. But a box would have posed an irresistible lure for prying photographers. The picture of Dukakis riding in a tank with his head barely poking up was bad enough.
Thompson says he intends to run as a Washington outsider, a silly but politically potent role perfected by a long line of candidates before him, including the current president. No matter how contrived the image, it seems to work pretty well. He's an outsider only in the sense that he has not been a sitting senator since 2003. Gosh, that's all of five years ago.
But he lives in posh McLean, Va., a Republican-leaning suburb of the nation's capital. He spent decades here as a lawyer-lobbyist representing big-bucks corporations such as Equitas, a company that sought to contain foreign insurers' liability for asbestos victims. As a senator, he had a reputation for being lazy. Yet it's hard slogging out there on the campaign trail, which ought to either confirm or put to rest that particular rap on him.
Thompson is already the 800-pound gorilla in the GOP contest. And size matters.
But size isn't everything. Remember last weekend's Belmont stakes, the last race in the Triple Crown? It was won by a filly, Rags to Riches, who beat the male Preakness winner Curlin, who was bigger but slower. There's a filly in the Democratic presidential race, too.
'Nuff said.
Fred Thompson
Political analysts widely regard Fred Thompson as a potential, if not likely, candidate in the United States presidential election in 2008. Thompson is a lawyer, lobbyist, character actor and former Republican Senator for Tennessee now residing in McLean, Virginia near Washington D.C.

A recent article in ''The New York Times'' (NYT) labelled his wife, Jeri Kehn Thompson as a "trophy wife" and a potential liability in the 2008 race. The NYT article described her as having "youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blonde hair" and wonders if "so-called values voters" would "accept this union." 

Thompson and Kehn, married in June 2002, when he was 60 years old and she 35. 

Television commentator and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough compared Kehn to a stripper and asked if "she works the pole." 

According to the ''Associated Press'', "trophy wife" originally "meant the second (or third) wife of a corporate titan, a woman who was younger, beautiful and — equally important — accomplished in her own right."

''ABC News'' says that the current definition of "trophy wife" suggests Donald Trump's ex-wife Marla Maples and the late Anna Nicole Smith as examples.

However, ''ABC News'' also questions whether Kehn fits this definition. "Though she's blond, beautiful and nearly 25 years younger than her husband, Kehn Thompson, a political media consultant who previously worked for the Senate Republican Conference and a prestigious Washington law firm, doesn't appear to fit the typical description," wrote Emily Friedman.

Karen O'Connor, a political scientist and the director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, said Thompson may lose support from Republican women, a group he needs. It may also make it difficult to gain the support of the "value voters", already skeptical after the report that he lobbied for an abortion-rights group.

"You have a situation where a candidate happens to have an attractive wife, therefore it’s open season for smutty thoughts and lowbrow humor, and no concern for the fact that this is a wife and mother, a professional woman?" said Mark Corallo, a former Justice Department official who is a consultant and the chief media adviser to the Thompson campaign. "One picture on the Internet and all of a sudden she’s reduced to being a bimbo?"