Fred Thompson - liar or just lazy?

By Libby

Although the trophy wife issue, which I addressed at Newshoggers, has resurfaced this morning, the question of the day seems to be on Fred Thompson's true stance on abortion. Is he a pro-choicer who has donned the anti-choice mantle for the purposes of his candidacy or is he a true believer in the government's duty to prevent personal choice? Frankly, I don't give a damn. There's plenty of other reasons to not to vote for him but the LAT piece on his pro-choice lobbying does raise issues about his integrity and his work ethic.

In case you're not up to speed, a pro-choice group says he worked for them in 1991 and several other people back up their memory of the contract. The candidate vehemently denies it, saying at best he was peripherally involved as "of counsel" to the firm that contracted the work. The pro-choice group says they paid the guy a significant sum of money to pitch their cause on Capitol Hill to John Sununu. Sununu backs up Fred and says he has no recollection of being lobbied, while the pro-choicers recall details of conversations with Fred in which he assured them he was actively courting Sununu's support.

James Joyner boils the controversy down to three possible scenarios.

(1) DeSarno and Barnes are making this up to hurt Thompson’s reputation.
(2) Thompson took DeSarno’s money but didn’t actually lobby Sununu, thus committing fraud.
(3) Thompson’s denial is a lie and Sununu is backing his play with a lie of his own.

I might suggest a fourth possibility. I see no reason for DeSarno and Barnes to pre-emptively smear Thompson for no reason. Thompson's equivocations on the issue have been much in the news lately and it would be natural for them to recall the work they paid him to do. One tends to remember major expenditures of that sort.

On the other hand, this happened in 1991. It's not surprising that Thompson and Sununu might not recall the project some 16 years later. Having worked in a small law firm that at any given time was juggling hundreds of open cases between only four partners and thousands of cases while I was employed there, I couldn't say without checking the database what we were working on in 1991 either.

Nonetheless, it's Thompson's immediate and vehement denial that raises a troubling question in my mind. How can he be so sure he didn't do the work without doing a substantial record check? It smacks of the typical GOP response to negative news. When in doubt, deny, deny, deny. If it you repeat the denials often enough, and get enough people to also repeat them, they take on that all-important veneer of truthiness that works so well in supplanting the facts of the matter. Isn't that why some 41% of Americans still believe in the long discredited Saddam-al-Qaeda connection?

From what I've heard about Thompson's work ethic, I think the likeliest scenario is something close to Joyner's #2 option. Thompson took the money and didn't really try that hard to obtain the stated objective of the contract. He probably had lunch or something with Sununu to cover himself from fraud but probably didn't spend much time pitching the policy change the pro-choicers were seeking. It would be interesting to see what other causes Fred was pitching in the same time frame. He may have multi-tasked on the lobbying and perhaps gave the pro-choicers short shrift in favor of a more lucrative contract.

But that's idle speculation and the real issue here isn't whether Thompson is pro or anti-choice. It's about whether he promised his clients the moon and only delivered green cheese. The assessment of many who have come to hear him speak is that he's all style and no substance. When questioned about why he's running and what he would do as president, he said, "I'd do lots of things," declining to elaborate. In fact after months of quasi-electioning, while "not" entering the race, the only substantive statement he's made is "he still was not ready to commit to a 2008 campaign."

Like any Lothario, Fred wants it both ways. He woos the people and the press with his "non-candidacy" soundbites, but dances around any questions about the future of the relationship or the true reasons behind his courtship. One has to ask if he can't even bring himself to commit to his own campaign, why anyone should think he's capable of running a country that, especially in the aftermath of the Bush regime, will demand a commitment to strong diplomacy and clearly articulated policy.