Former Republican presidential hopeful speaks….frankly

Fred Thompson is still hopeful, but in a dfferent way than when he entered the presidential race. He gave an insightful interview to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and it had some of the most refreshingly honest answers we’ve heard in politics in a while. But then, Thompson is out of politics…

THOMPSON: It might be — a lot of people seem to think, and it might very well be true, that a person has got to be extremely personally ambitious and desire the office more than anything else in the world, and willing to do what’s necessary, and anything that’s necessary, to achieve it.

And I just never was there. And — but I was what I was. And I come out the other end of it the same way I went into it, and that’s much more important to me than a particular election.

And we got to talk about things, the few things, the handful of things that really matter. Most of these things we spend all our time on don’t really matter. The president can’t do anything about them anyway. But…

HANNITY: Boy, that’s an honest statement, that you don’t really often hear.

THOMPSON: Well, it’s true, and everybody knows it’s true. But you’ve got to go around, you know, and talk about and answer all the questions, and be — try to be all things to all people. And nobody can really do that.

I saw this interview when it aired. It loses something on the printed page. Thompson was blatantly honest about the nature of a presidential campaign.  And the near total certainty that he’d wind up in the VP spot.

The presidency is the only job in town that’s worth going through what you’ve got to go through to get it. And that includes the vice presidency and all of the rest of them, as far as I’m concerned.

And I thought I had an opportunity to do some things a different way. And if I was successful, I could lead in a different way. That didn’t work out. I’m interested in absolutely nothing else other than doing what I can to help those who are trying to help this country, and be a good citizen and do those things that I can do now in the private sector to help these kids and grandchildren.

But that does not involve, you know, going to state funerals in faraway places.

That pretty much describes the traditional role of the vice-president.

How does Thompson see Barack Obama?

Well, Senator Obama is a great unknown. I think seldom, if ever, has anyone gotten this far in the process and we’ve known less about them. He’s new, and he’s inexperienced. That’s one of the things that’s troubling to me, considering the times that we live in and that we’re going to be living in.

What we do know indicates that he is very typical. He is a young man on the move, very ambitious politically, been laying his groundwork for a long, long time to run for president. And he is one of the most liberal politicians in Washington. And he walks lockstep with the most liberal positions that come down the pike on every occasion.

That’s what we do know about him. And those are troubling things.

So these — these gaffes that he’s making, so-called, these unsavory friends that we’re hearing a lot about it, I mean, that’s — that’s insightful, I think, in trying to determine who this guy is. But the very fact we’re going through this process of trying to determine who this guy is this late in the game is unique and different.

Trying to figure out who the presumptive nominee for president is, this late in the game, is more than unique and different. It’s unsettling, even for a lot of Democrats.

And how about the embattled Republicans?

Well, the question is whether or not we’ve kind of learned our lesson. You know, we — as the old saying goes, you know, we came to town to drain the swamp, and we — instead of that we made partners with the alligators. And now we’ve become, you know, big spenders ourselves and engaged in the same kind of stuff the Democrats have been engaged in. Have we learned our lesson? We got our clocks cleaned last time.

We need to reform ourselves. We need to learn our lesson. We need to get back to basic fundamental conservative principals. The things that we are supposed to believe in, which should guide us through all these issues that come down the pipe.

The problem is, as we sit here today, very few people on Capitol Hill have any credibility. Saying it is one thing. Saying a, you know, death- bed confession or conversion is one thing, but having a track record and standing tall when times are tough is another thing.

So….what about John McCain?

We can’t run a typical campaign with typical kind of promises and so forth in light of what’s happened, in light of the unpopularity that so many Republicans have nowadays. And some of it’s deserved. Some of it’s not. We’ve got to have a different kind of approach, different kind of campaign and a different kind of man, the kind of man who everybody gave up for dead.

Figuratively and literally, that would be John McCain.

I mean, when I got in the race back last September everybody had written John off, including me. And so now he comes back, the longest of the long shots, and now, ironically, he, more than anyone else, is in a position in this supposed to be terrible year for Republicans, is postured to win in November.

At this point, anything could happen. And now, an intriguing question is where some of these former candidates will wind up, like John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Sam Brownback, Fred Thompson…