There has been WAY TOO MUCH HYPE over Fred Thompson running for President as of late. He supposedly has positions or characteristics that the existing roster of candidates don’t, and therefore is the true “conservative” in the race. I find this notion baffling, particularly coming from online quarters. More on that in a bit.

So let’s review the open positions that the candidates have taken:

• Abortion/Gun Control: So this crack is against Giuliani, who holds positions that are a-typical for a Republican, and maybe secondarily against Romney, who came to hold these positions later, but still, 2/3 of the top declared candidates hold the “right” positions for the party now. But who cares? Is this election about abortion and gun control? Isn’t it about that war going on?
• Campaign Finance Reform: This crack is primarily against McCain, but Giuliani also has come out in support of it, and oops, so has Fred Thompson!!! Sorry folks, but if this issue matters to you, your only candidate among the top three (four if you include Thompson) is Romney.
• Taxes: Thompson’s a tax cutter. Then again, so is Giuliani. Romney is a fake on that count (at least from what I’ve observed up close in Massachusetts) and McCain is a flip flopper.
• The War: So how about that war? Well, all of the top three (four) candidates are sufficiently in favor of pursuing the war on terror, and none are in favor of a cut and run in Iraq. But who has the executive experience to run a war? Surely Romney and Giuliani have that experience, and at least McCain experienced war first hand in a way that likely makes him qualified to run one. Thompson? I suppose he plays a good commander on tv…

And what about that whole TV thing? John Dickerson puts it well in his piece today on the Case Against Thompson [emphasis mine]:

Thompson’s chief appeal is emotional. Until now, many conservative Republicans have had to wince when they thought of their plausible presidential choices. Giuliani is too liberal, McCain is too unpredictable and too well-liked by the media, and Romney seems like a flip-flopper on the issues they care about. The possibility of a Thompson candidacy excites the Republicans I talk to. He’s an “outsider”—having left Washington for Law and Order before the Beltway rot set in. He’s a good communicator, which means he can sell conservative policies and has the star power to battle Hillary or Obama. Though he hasn’t been through the press-vetting process, his voting record and talk-radio performances suggest he holds conservative enough positions. Oh, and he can raise Hollywood cash.

Right, he’s a Hollywood guy. So let’s ask a few questions of a Hollywood guy:

• Where do you stand on the DMCA? Do you think that it should be repealed, or at least scaled back in some way to allow people to make copies of their own DVD’s to store on their computers and watch on their AppleTV’s? Or should end-users not have that right?
• How do you feel about the Sonny Bono Act? Is 90 years a reasonable length of time for a copyright? Or is a length of time longer than the human lifespan a bit absurd?
• And for that matter, how do you feel about orphaned works? Should the title held by intellectual property owners trump the rights of those who would maintain and utilize abandoned content?
• How about fair use? Is Google ok to take snippets of books to help people find what they’re looking for? What about of news articles? Is the entertainment industry trying to destroy all notions of fair use, or are techies and their companies being abusive of the rights of copyright holders? In that vein, how do you feel about the matter between George Orwell’s estate and the now infamous 1984 anti-Hillary ad?
• Finally, where do you stand on the whitespace initiative, supported by Microsoft, Google and others, to open up unused bandwidth in the television portion of the spectrum? Is this a good way to democratize the airwaves, or is this an intrusion upon the rights of television broadcasters?

Now admittedly, NONE of the other candidates have answered any of these questions, and they should. And we should insist that every one of them do so. But it seems to me that the candidate who would be least likely to come to the right answer on any of those questions would be one connected to Hollywood, whether they take money as donations or as a salary.

In my mind, until Thompson declares himself otherwise, I have to assume he’s on the wrong side of all of those issues. And if he isn’t, then he sure ain’t getting any of that Hollywood money that apparently makes him so appealing in the first place.

UPDATE: Now that I think about it, I believe he was in the Senate when both the Sonny Bono act and the DMCA passed, which likely means he voted for both. No matter, I’d accept a change of heart having seen the consequences. But I’d still be surprised if he had one.

UPDATE 2: More on Thompson’s voting record from Congressional Quarterly.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 7:54 am and is filed under News & Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.