If I hear another media outlet refer to Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson as “folksy” or “avuncular,” I think I’m going to vomit. Can we please stop the practice of advocating and voting for presidential candidates because they make us feel cuddly or prickly? I don’t care that Al Gore was “stiff” — he would have done a better job than the president that everybody seemed to decide they would (in the completely unrealistic subjunctive) “rather have a beer with.” What matters is what presidential candidates do, not how they make us feel.
So what has Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson done? He’s been caught fibbing.
Judith DeSarno, past president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, says that Fred Thompson was hired by the group as a lobbyist to the White House administration of George Herbert Walker Bush in 1991 and assigned the task of pushing for more open regulations on abortion — namely, to allow doctors to use the word “abortion” when engaged in professional discussions with their patients.
Fred Thompson responded to DeSarno by trotting out a spokesman to claim “There’s no documents to prove it, there’s no billing records, and Thompson says he has no recollection of it, says it didn’t happen,” and that at the very most he talked to another lobbyist who was doing the actual work.
One problem for Fred Thompson is substantive — do you think the majority of Americans think it’s a good idea for doctors to be legally able to name a legal medical procedure in discussions with their patients? Apparently, Fred Thompson doesn’t, because he’s running away fast and hard from any hint that he once supported the idea. Thompson’s current authoritarianism on the issue places him well outside the American mainstream.
Another problem for Fred Thompson is that DeSarno’s contention is backed up by meeting minutes which specifically mention the hire. DeSarno and the meeting minutes are further backed up by Rep. Michael Barnes, who worked as a fellow lobbyist with Fred Thompson at the time. Says Barnes:
I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization. I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is fact.
Either there’s a grand conspiracy of members of Congress and non-profits and pieces of paper to make Fred Thompson look like a liar, or Fred Thompson’s a liar. Go ahead and call him a folksy and avuncular liar if that makes you feel more comfortable.
(Source: Los Angeles Times, July 7 2007)
