Home-spun charm

Fred Thompson was on Jay Leno last night. He’s an actor, but a lot of folk, including him, think that he ought to be President of the United States. These are people who remember Ronald Reagan was an actor, but who forget that Reagan sold arms to our enemies to fund terrorists and cut deals with hostage takers.

Anyway, Reagan left acting to become a politician. Fred Thomson left politics to become an actor. Ole Fred does have a certain home-spun charm, as for example when he explained his career path, thus:

After eight years in Washington, I longed for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

By the way, “home-spun charm” is my term for high-gloss bullshit.

Before he was elected to the Senate, Thompson spent nearly two decades in Washington as a lawyer-lobbyist, representing such entities as Westinghouse, the deposed leader of Haiti, the Teamsters Union pension fund and the Tennessee Savings and Loan Association. And when he left office, he continued his lucrative career representing foreign corporations.

Think back to that 2005 State of the Union address when King George the Incompetent said, “Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims -- and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.”

It seemed out of place at the time, but no more so than Fred Thompson in a red pick-up truck. You see, back in 2005, Fred Thompson was using his connections to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to extract information about goings-on inside Congress and selling it to a British company that had a good reason to worry about liability for asbestos claims. For this he got paid $760,000. Not bad work if you can get it.

It is not surprising therefore that Fred Thompson’s first policy initiative should garner such approval from the National Association of Manufacturers, his natural constituency. They cite with approval this bit of home-spun charming wisdom from Fred's appearance on CNBC:

We have, you know--if you include state taxes--the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That makes us less competitive. All those things have to be looked at. And all those--especially as far as the corporate tax rate is concerned, need to be clearly reduced.

As David Sirota points out:

[T]he Government Accountability Office reported in 2004, 94 percent of corporations pay less than 5 percent of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments are at their second lowest level in 60 years - lower than in every other industrialized country other than Iceland.

Stay tuned for more of Fred Thompson’s home-spun charm.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”