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Fred Thompson's Vast Audience of One John L. Perry Of all presidential contenders, Fred Thompson has the smallest-possible constituency, yet because of that he enjoys the largest-possible audience — enough to become the next president. Not yet a declared candidate for his party's nomination, Thompson has mastered the neglected art of speaking exclusively to one listener. This enables him to reach individual listeners by the millions. As Bill Frist, his former Senate colleague from Tennessee, put it in a recent NewsMax Magazine article, "Every individual listening believes that he's speaking just to them." Nor is that some snippet of serendipity that rubbed off on Thompson as a highly popular movie and television-series actor.
Frist nailed it right on the head when he added: "It's not artificial, it's the real Fred. His genuineness comes across." Thompson is an authentic conservative on foreign policy, on the economy and on all the porcupine social issues most politicians writhe to avoid having tossed in their laps.
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Not surprisingly, that delights the Republican "conservative base" (whatever that is anymore). Thompson comes closer than any of the other GOP hopefuls to gratifying that yearning. Yet also, when moderates hear it from Thompson his genuinely conservative position does not set their teeth on edge.
Indeed, the more that both right-of-center and center listeners hark unto him, the more they seem to like what they hear. No doubt about it: The way Thompson says what he says has as least as much to do with his acceptance as what he says. He's not addressing "my fellow Americans" — all 301 million of them. He's not talking just to Republicans. He's not talking just to members of this or that ethnic, or economic, or religious, or demographic group. He's talking exclusively to one individual. It's as if he said, "I'm talking to you, just you. And we both know who you are."
When he discusses big issues of the 2008 presidential campaign, he has a natural, homespun manner of talking plain, common sense, not just conservative, not just middle-of-the-road political ideology. The net effect is that he is talking — individually — to all Americans who know common sense when they hear it, and they number in the many, many millions, regardless of party affiliation. That is the key to the White House in the 2008 general election. Thompson really does seem to be the only one in either political party's roster of presidential possibilities who gets that. No other candidate, or not-yet candidate, gets it. But Thompson's individual listener — multiplied by the millions — gets it. Stop reading for a few moments, close your eyes and let the other serious candidates, Democrats and Republicans, parade across the theater of your mind.
Ask yourself if you feel any of those is talking just to you and talking common sense, at that. Try it on Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani. All are talking right past you to get to the great mass audience, where they think the votes are that will elect them. If anything, you are in their way. Try it now with Fred Thompson. Get the difference? It's amazing, especially since the nation has heard all those candidates many times over and heard Thompson relatively seldom. That is an indication of the power of his remarkable, natural communications skill.
Of whom does Fred Thompson remind you? Ronald Reagan of course, a master at talking one-to-one and thus influencing millions. When he directly addressed Mikhail Gorbachev and told the Soviet leader to "tear down this wall," multitudes around the globe cheered — and the Berlin wall came down. Another was LeRoy Collins, the Florida governor who made such a memorable impression on television while presiding over the 1960 Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy. The immense audience who watched and heard Collins, a memorably eloquent speaker, were convinced he was addressing only them. Indeed he was, right from his heart. It was difficult to classify Collins politically, for what he said made such common sense. No American of national political prominence since Ron Reagan and Roy Collins has been blessed with that talent . . . except, now, Fred Thompson, another man of uncommon common sense. John L. Perry, a prizewinning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com. Read John Perry's columns here.
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