Does America want another Ronald Reagan?



Actor Fred Thompson, best known as District Attorney Arthur Branch in the television serial Law & Order, suddenly looks like the presidential candidate the Republicans have been waiting for.

There is something about politics and greasepaint that works for Americans. Euros cry 'fake', but Americans saw only charm and authenticity in Ronald Reagan.

Now a statement that he might run for the White House has Thompson - who portrayed gruff authority figures in The Hunt for Red October, No Way Out and Die Hard 2 - barging into the Republican ratings at number three in the latest Gallup poll with 12 per cent. Significantly, he takes the first bite out of front-runner Rudy Giuliani, down a whopping 13 per cent to 31. Senator John McCain, in second place, sinks to 22. Mitt Romney is shoved down to 'margin of error' status at three per cent.

Actor Fred Thompson is eyeing the White House, and he could be perfect, says charles laurence
Thompson, 64, is an upside-down Reagan: he was into law and politics before he started acting in 1985 as an easy way to earn a living.

After running a senator's election campaign, he was rewarded with a job as a lawyer on the Senate Watergate Committee, where he came up with the fabled question: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

In 1994, he took over Al Gore's old Tennessee Senate seat, quitting voluntarily in 2002.

With his broad shoulders and jutting square jaw, he looks like the kind of guy to bring law and order to a dangerous world. But America beware: Thompson is the son of a second-hand car salesman from Alabama, and he is attached to the American Enterprise Institute, nest of neo-cons behind Dubya Bush's policies at home and abroad.

FIRST POSTED MARCH 29, 2007



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