Fred Thompson in Second Place? Doesn't Any Republican Know How to Play this Game?

Casey Stengel when he was managing the truly terrible New York Mets in the early 1960s supposedly once called a meeting on the pitcher's mound and asked the team, "doesn't anyone know how to place this game?"

I thought of Casey's remark when I heard that Fred Thompson has now moved into second place among GOP presidential candidates, ahead of John McCain (whose bunker mentality about the Iraq war has apparently hurt him) and Mitch Romney (who really looks much more like both a Hollywood leading man and a president for that matter than Thompson) and not so far beyond the "Iron Mayor" of New York, Rudy You Know Who or Whom, i.e., the "liberal candidate" in Republican fantasy politics.

What is really going on here? A plot to have Thompson and much of the Law and Order cast become the cabinet and Bush and Cheney become the police and prosecutors on Law and Order? Is there anyone who can stop Thompson in the GOP?

The problem may be that no Republican presidential candidates have gone to the Actors Studio, since those who knew about it realized that it was associated with the theories of the Russian director Stanaslavsky, and thus a "front group" for the Soviets.

Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, McCain and others can show up for classes, do their exercises to try to become more realistic presidential candidates and challenge Thompson on the appearances and the emotions, not the issues, since they have as little understanding of them as Thompson.

Thompson seems to have a clear idea of traditional Republican politics. He for example said that he had "always" been a "pro-life" (meaning that he is against woman's productive rights and the separation of church and state, unless of course he has a non-theological reason for opposing women's reproductive rights) Senator. A right-wing conservative interviewed in the cable stream of consciousness said that he knew that Thompson had not opposed abortion as a Senator and had supported removing the anti-abortion plank from the GOP platform in 1996.

If that is true, Thompson is clearly in the right-wing Republican tradition of holding everyone accountable except yourself. He is also in the Bush administration tradition of saying things that are completely false and can be checked and assuming that this is normal and that you can get away with it. Thompson is really joining the presidential candidates club.

A man named Dick Wolf produces and profits from the Law and Order shows and moves actors in and out of the various roles. If Thompson reaches the presidency, will Wolf replace him with John McCain after ratings drop in a year or two or Thompson wants too much money? Will there by spinoffs for fictional characters becoming presidents and prime ministers through the world? While the United Nations be called in to manage the global television franchise or will Rupe Murdoch try to horn in?

When I sent my previous satirical article on Fred Thompson's presidential run to a friend, he warned me tongue deep in cheek that left writers in Berlin had laughed at Hitler in the early 1920s and look what happened a decade later. But I'll take my chances and continue to satirize Arthur Branch aka Fred Thompson aka a Man who never changes his convictions, only his scripts.

--Norman Markowitz