Fred Thompson's Iffy Entrance

He is finally ready for his close-up. After the longest throat-clearing in election history, Fred Thompson has announced he will announce his candidacy next Thursday--by webcast, thereby postponing a little longer the tawdry business of personal appearances and pressing the flesh.

Up to now, Thompson’s “Wag the Dog” campaign has been working well enough to push him into second place in the polls behind Rudy Giuliani without saying much of anything. The few times he has proferred platitudes at rubber-chicken dinners, the applause was not deafening.

Now he is going to have to answer tiresome questions about his past lobbying, his relaxed work ethic and his young wife’s campaign-managing. He will have stand next to the Republican pygmies in debates and trade zingers with the likes of Ron Paul. If he flubs his lines in stump speeches, there won’t be any retakes.

There is a long tradition of movie actors blowing it in live theater. Thompson may regret stepping out from emoting for the cameras and taking his chances with live audiences who may hiss and boo or, worst of all, yawn.

Thompson's Reagan Act: Timing is Off

If Fred Thompson’s slow-motion entrance onto the ’08 scene was meant to create suspense and/or keep him out of the political crossfire, it isn’t working out too well.

The suspense is long gone, and the anticipation is beginning to look like impatience as negative stories about his past, his changing staff, his lagging fund-raising and his wife’s undue influence just keeping coming.

Whether spontaneous or spurred by rival candidates, reports about Thompson’s lobbying career are beginning to chip away at the actor-Senator’s down-home can-do resume.

After the revelation that he worked briefly for a pro-abortion group comes the story now of his hefty earnings and campaign contributions from two corporations for pushing what turned out to be a taxpayer-financed $1.7 billion “hole in the ground” for a proposed nuclear breeder reactor in Tennessee.

The Presidential image is being tarnished by what looks like greedy opportunism.

While Giuliani and Romney keep dueling over who can save us from terrorists and illegal immigrants, the competence issue is beginning to bypass Thompson and, when he finally steps out to do his Reagan impersonation, it may be too little and too late.