Farewell to Fred

And so adieu to Fred Thompson from the Republican Presidential race. You came, you saw, you left in the manner that you had campaigned in. Quietly, and without much fanfare.

Your campaign was an abject lesson in the adage that timing is everything in politics. Your conservative voting record while in the Senate, and TV star credentials, had propelled you to opinion poll leads by early summer 2007. Yet you dawdled on making the decision to enter the race until all the momentum had drained away from behind you. In retrospect, it is pretty damning that you excited more coverage in that long, protracted and drawn out process than when you actually got going. 

Once in, you made the occasional good debating point, but were undone by a famously 'relaxed' attitude to campaigning. To your credit, you ran a clean and positive campaign, but that wasn't enough to persuade the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan. Although in South Carolina, you did us all a favour by siphoning enough votes off to stop Mike Huckabee from winning. We look forward to your endorsement of your old friend John McCain, as some of your supporters have already done...and of course your return to the silver screen.