Fred Thompson: Another Beltway Bubba?

Another Beltway Bubba?
Fred Thompson has spun an insider background into a good ol'boy image that could take him to the White House

By Michelle Cottle

True story: it is a warm evening in the summer of 1995. A crowd has gathered in the auditorium of a suburban high school in Knoxville, Tennessee. Seated in the audience is a childhood friend of mine who now teaches at the school. On stage is Republican Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson, the lawyer/actor elected in 1994 to serve out the remainder of Vice President Al Gore's Senate term (when Gore's appointed successor retired after just two years). The local TV stations are on hand as Thompson wraps up his presentation on tax reform, in the plain-spoken, down-to-earth style so familiar to those who have seen him in any of his numerous film and television performances.

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Clearly, there's more to Fred Dalton Thompson than first meets the eye--which is saying a lot considering this sleepy-eyed Southerner stands 6'5" and weighs 225 if he weighs an ounce. With his pickup truck, his blue jeans, and his deep, friendly drawl, Thompson has cultivated the perfect political image for today's anti-Washington climate: a straight-shooting, no-nonsense man of the people with a big helping of horse sense and a hankering to clean up our nation's capital. Both his 1994 and 1996 Senate campaigns played up this outsider image, portraying Thompson as an average Joe who shares his neighbors' disgust with a political system that no longer serves regular citizens.

But even without the Hollywood credits, the 54-year-old Thompson is far from your average good ol' boy. In the mid-1970s he served as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, and later as a special counsel for both the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. Even more significantly, for nearly two decades preceding his election to Congress, Thompson was a high-paid Washington lobbyist for both foreign and domestic interests.

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:kick:

and all the other "hotties" before he married his 2-year-old wife ...

is just arising. He's been known as a life long womanizer like Livingston and Gingrich.