The Games The Agenda Media Play
People have seen this Fred quote all day. Unfortunately, it’s taken badly out of context. Fred posted a clarification on his FredFile blog. First, here’s the out-of-context quote:
Fred Thompson said Saturday he does not much like the modern form of presidential campaigning and that he “will not be devastated” if he doesn’t win the election.
“I’m not particularly interested in running for president,” Thompson said, but rather he feels called to serve his country.
Here’s Fred’s answer in context:
Q: My only problem with you and why I haven’t thrown all my support behind you is that I don’t know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?
…In the first place I got in the race about the time people normally get into it historically. The fact of the matter is that others started the process a lot earlier this time than they normally do. I think it was for some of them when they were juniors in high school.
APPLAUSE
That is a very good question, not because it’s difficult to answer, because, but I’m gonna answer it in a little different way than what you might expect.
In the first place, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be doing this if i didn’t. I grew up very modest circumstances. I left government, I and my family have made sacrifices for me to be sitting here today. I haven’t had any income for a long time because I’m doing this. I figure that to be clean you’ve got to cut everything off. And I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a tv show, I had a contract with abc radio like I was talking about earlier and so forth. I guess a man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family which is not a joyful thing at all if he didn’t want to do it.
But I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don’t do it. I want the people to have the best president that they can have.
When this talk first started, it didn’t originate with me. There were a lot of people around the country both directly and through polls, liked the idea of me stepping up. And of course, you always look better at a distance, I guess.
But most of those people are still there and think its a good idea. But I approached it from the standpoint of a deal. A kind of a marriage. If one side of a marriage has to be really talked into the marriage, it probably ain’t going to be a very good deal for either one of them. But if you mutually think that this is a good thing. In this case, if you think this is a good thing for the country, then you have an opportunity to do some wonderful things together.
I’m offering myself up. I’m saying that I have the background, the capability, and the concern to do this and I’m doing it for the right reasons. But I’m not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I’d make a good president.
Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be. I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly. I’m not sure in the world we live in today it’s a terribly good thing if a president has too much fire in the belly. I approach life differently than a lot of people. People, I guess, wonder how I’ve been as successful as I’ve been in everything I’ve done. I won two races in TN by 20 point margins, a state that Bill Clinton carried twice. I’d never run for office before. I’ve never had an acting lesson and I guess that’s obvious by people who’ve watched me. But when they made a movie about a case that I had when I took on a corrupt state administration as a lawyer and beat them before a jury. They made a movie about it and I wound up playing myself in the movie and yeah I can do that.
And when I did it, I did it. Wasn’t just a lark. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well. But I’ve always been a little bit more laid back than most. I like to say that I’m only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them. The welfare of our country and our kids and grandkids is one of them.
If people really want in their president a super type-a personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they could achieve the Presidency of the United States, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain’t that guy. So I hope I’ve discussed that and hope I haven’t talked you out of anything. I honestly want - I can’t imagine a worse set of circumstances than achieving the presidency under false pretenses. I go out of my way to be myself because I don’t want anybody to think they are getting something they are not getting. I’m not consumed by this process I’m not consumed with the notion of being President. I’m simply saying I’m willing to do what’s necessary to achieve it if I’m in sync with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. I’ll do what I’ve always done in the rest of my life and I will take it on and do a good job and you’ll have the disadvantage of having someone who probably can’t jump up and click their heels three times but will tell you the truth and you’ll know where the President stands at all times.
Here’s a final shot at the USA Today correspondent:
Incidentally, the audience in Burlington broke into applause in the middle of my answer. The reporter wouldn’t know that because she wasn’t even there.
What’s interesting is the opening to the USA Today article and its first update:
Bill Theobald of Gannett News Service has been following Republican Fred Thompson around Iowa. In a dispatch today from Burlington, Bill quotes the former Tennessee senator as saying he doesn’t like modern campaigning, isn’t that interested in running for president and “will not be devastated” if he doesn’t win.
Update at 2:45 p.m. ET: Bill calls to clarify that Thompson said he doesn’t like the process of running for president but he does want to BE president. He told the Burlington audience he would not have given up his acting career and time with his family to run if that were not the case.
Question for my readers: How can you first put the incendiary comment into an article, then call the office and give them the real quote?
Count this as just one of the tricks that the Agenda Media will play to put a candidate on the defensive. Perhaps that’s why their readership is shrinking?
Technorati Tags: Fred Thompson, Agenda Media, Blogs
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
December 30th, 2007 at 8:41 am
This is very typical of a press that has become notorious for NOT doing their homework, NOT checking their sources, just ripping something off the wires and reading it like a zombie.
The Hillary - Obama banter has become trite and boring, Iraq is no longer the lead story, they’ve been chafing their hands and milking that stupid tiger incident in San Fransicko now for over a week, no body pays attention anymore to their annual gloom and doom Christmas shopping report, and they have already bored us to tears with night aftyer night of blubbering over the sub prime mortgage story. So, of course, anything a real conservative says that can be slammed against him is too easy.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Forgot the wasted ink and electrons reporting the trials and tribulation of those poor babes in Hollywood. My heart just pumps purple panther piss for them!
December 30th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Fisk, fisk…
If, by long time, 6 months. And then, of course, there’s the L&O residuals (Freddie himself called them lucrative).
And yet, at fred08 dot com, there is little about how our children and grandchildren are going to pay for the Iraq War, as the presnit raises the national debt ceiling to nearly $10 Trillion dollars; offers little substantive recommendations on reforming healthcare (more of the same is by its definition, not reform); and while Fred drones on about “energy security,” he does not mention global warming, which kind of makes his positions altogether look like a sprinkling of fairy dust. Funny, given his later statement regarding not jumping up to click his heels together three times.
Like most people, I can’t picture Freddie jumping up to do much of anything. His statements, taken both in context of his online rebuttal and out of context in the USA Today piece, are the same. We get it, Fred. You lack the conviction to really work for anything, hence the numerous career changes. You lack the character to stick with any one for very long, hence the divorce and new trophy wife. And, a folksy demeanor is more important than real, fire-in-the-belly desire to lead. That pretty much sums of Frederick of Hollywood: he’d play a great president on TV.
December 31st, 2007 at 11:14 am
Scares you doesn’t he Rocky?
Thats kinda the way I feel about Obama.