An Interesting Backgrounder on Fred Thompson, and an Extraordinary Look at Newt Gingrich

This race has a long way to go.

by Rod D. Martin
March 13, 2007

John Podhoretz pens this interesting backgrounder on Fred Thompson in today's New York Post. And at The Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti writes this long but rewarding look at the smartest man in American politics. You don't have to support his presidential bid to be amazed by Newt Gingrich again and again and again: you simply have to listen for a bit.

A lot has been said about how hard it's going to be for anyone to join the race at this point. I think that's badly overstated. It's going to be hard for anyone to run for President, period; but Giuliani's appeal is chiefly that everyone knows who he is and remembers about one week in his life positively, Romney is fizzling, McCain is (as Dick Morris put it) "collapsing", and it isn't even the Ides of March of the year before.

Do Thompson have a national constituency? Does Rudy? Both men mostly have celebrity, and this is a celebrity culture. Who knows? Gingrich, should he run, certainly has more.