President Elect Thompson and Our Next Terrorist Attack
Anyone really watching the development of politics in America today must see that Fred Thompson is really President-Elect Fred Thompson. I say that as someone who thinks Rudy Giuliani would make a great wartime president and who would also do many of the good things for America that he was able to do for New York.
The reality, however, is that even the shadow candidacy of Thompson is casting a huge shadow indeed. The online Sean Hannity poll showed Thompson getting, as an unannounced candidate, more votes that all other Republican candidates combined. Fred Thompson, as an unannounced candidate, is winning every straw poll in the South. Fred Thompson, who will soon be visiting with Republican members of Congress to discuss his possible candidacy, has been overwhelmed by senators and congressman who want to talk with him (probably because he is the best chance Republicans have of re-taking Congress.)
Will he win the general election? Fred Thompson is likeable, persuasive and savvy man. Thompson is a conservative on every major issue of the day. Democrats will nominate a Leftist, not a centrist, as their nominee. When is the last time a Leftist defeated a conservative in a presidential election? Try 1916, when Woodrow Wilson – using the Ku Klux Klan Leftist South eked by Charles Evans Hughes. That was not just the last time but the only time.
Why? The Battleground Poll, the most respected of all the polls, has consistently for many years shown that sixty percent of Americans consider themselves as “conservative” while only thirty-five percent of Americans consider themselves as “liberals” (those poll have the option of calling themselves a “moderate” or “don’t know” and choose “conservative” or “liberal” instead.)
It is certain that Fred Thompson will be elected president in 2008. It is just as certain that sometime in the next few years America will be the subject of another horrific terrorist attack. Which raises the question of how President-Elect Thompson will serve the nation when that happens. President Bush showed courage after September 11. He gave some of the best speeches of his presidency. But despite my respect for this very good man, President Bush, at his best does not approach Fred Thompson at his worst as a communicator. Those were men who led their nations through savage injuries much worse than September 11 and who did so by two qualities.
Churchill and Lincoln were both, of course, masters of language. The wartime speeches of Churchill need no reinforcement in this article nor should the Gettysburg Address or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Both men, like Fred Thompson, understood the power of words. We tend to forget, though it is childish to forget, that it was precisely the speeches and the power of these two men’s words which won their great wars.
How would President-Elect Thompson fit into this historical role? Well, consider the two great leaders of the two great English speaking nations during our war on terror. How do they stack up? Although a genuine liberal and not in any sense a conservative, does any conservative doubt that when Prime Minister Blair came to Washington to talk about the war on terror that we conservatives all breathed a collective sigh of relief? This Left of center British politician articulated the reasons why we must win better than our own conservative Republican president. Okay: think of Tony Blair as a conservative Republican American president. That is President-Elect Thompson.
What other quality is needed to win a long, bitter war for survival? General Washington might not say it, but those around him would: a presence, a dignity, an indifference to ambition, a power to unite and a power to command. Churchill and Lincoln did not, particularly, have those qualities. George Washington and President-Elect Thompson do.
People fight and win desperate wars for men whose sincerity and commitment to the bitter end are absolute. That is how wars are won, including our war on terrorism. The words of Lincoln, the voice of Churchill, the nobility of Washington – these are what we need to fight the global evil seeking to strangle goodness and decency in our world. President-Elect Thompson is the man of the hour, the man of destiny. When (not if) we have our next September 11 or our next Pearl Harbor, President-Elect Thompson will lead us to victory and to the unconditional surrender of those who worship evil as a god.
Bruce Walker has been a published author in print and in electronic media since 1990. He is a regular contributor to WebCommentary, Conservative Truth, American Daily, Enter Stage Right, Intellectual Conservative, NewsByUs and MenÕs News Daily. His first book, Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie by Outskirts Press was published in January 2006.
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