Invisible Fred

Guess what? Nobody knows who Fred Thompson is.

Hillary Clinton - 98%
Rudy Giuliani - 86%
John Edwards - 81%
John McCain - 80%
Barack Obama - 75%
Mitt Romney - 46%
Fred Thompson - 38%

We in the blogosphere sometimes overstate the importance of blog posts, and we expect the general public to have the same political literacy as we do. Plus, Fred Thompson's on TV, right, surely people know who he is? The short answer is no. Ronald Reagan was an actor, yes, but he also was Governor of California and a conservative icon for about 15 years before he became President. And Arnold Schwarzenegger was an "above-the-title" actor. Fred Thompson's a character actor, "the guy from Curly Sue." His face might be vaguely known but his name isn't. And he was a complete unknown as a Senator, not authoring or passing any notable piece of legislation in eight years.

So as much as the political press wants to push this he-looks-the-part nonsense, the truth is that Thompson is just some random character actor without any actual resonance in the country. The press may be star-struck, but the people aren't. And when people do start to figure out that he's pretty much your generic Republican, whose campaign manager is a former tobacco industry executive, whose main career is really as a lobbyist, whose political action committee was largely a slush fund for his son, they're going to look at him the same way they look at all Republicans in the "culture of corruption" era: with a jaundiced eye.