Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: For <i>Playboy</i>, Ron Paul, not Fred Thompson, should be the Republican to watch

October 22, 2007

For Playboy, Ron Paul, not Fred Thompson, should be the Republican to watch

Playboy’s critics are right after all. The magazine promotes superficially attractive bimbos while ignoring those with substantial, inner beauty. But I’m not talking about the models. I mean the presidential candidates it chooses to aid. Fred Thompson doesn’t deserve his three pages of publicity in the November issue (“Straight Talk Expressed”) nearly as much as Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), who, of the two, has much more to offer the sort of voter who reads Playboy.

To be fair, Playboy’s editors didn’t have the benefit of the latest financial news from the race when they compiled that issue: on the Republican side, only the Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Ron Paul campaigns have decent cash flow as I write this. But Thompson’s own words from his conversation with Jeff Greenfield show his relative lack of substance:
One time I remember a vote about the legislation to federalize the Good Samaritan law. That law said if you stopped to help someone on the highway, they couldn’t sue you. I thought this was something the states had been taking care of pretty well for 200 years. They have reasons to give partial coverage, no coverage or total coverage, depending on such factors as whether someone was helpful but also unbelievably careless. So my view was that the states should handle it. The vote was 99 to one. I went back to the office, and the staff was battening down the hatches for an onslaught. It never came. I got some positive feedback but nothing negative. So back to the point: If you’re a little risky and do what you think you ought to do and say what you think you ought to say—as long as you don’t get too carried away or say totally stupid things—it’s a good political strategy, if one wanted to make a strategy of it. [p. 96]
Here, Thompson congratulates himself for doing once what Paul does routinely. Paul has earned the congressional nickname “Dr. No” for his habit of saying no to the expansion of the federal government when most of his peers say yes. But never mind that. While Paul can invoke the Constitution to justify most of his legislative decisions, Thompson places sincerity far above any other political virtue:
I decide within 30 seconds whether I like a guy. I don’t know what party he is. I don’t know what his beliefs are. You feel as if you know whether the guy believes what he’s saying, whether he is sincere, whether he’s just another manufactured politician. In the future the person who steps out from all that protective coating will have something special going for him. [p. 98; emphasis added]
Such anti-intellectualism! Thompson may be somewhat earthier and more spontaneous than the average Washington politician, but so what? Almost anyone could have made the banal points about our phony politicians that he makes in his chat with Greenfield. By necessity, monthly magazines are among the slowest of the news media. But even by their standards, this journalistic leftover (from 2005, by its own admission) isn’t news.

At Reason, David Weigel explains in more detail why Thompson’s campaign is a big yawn.

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Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 8:55 AM

  • Anonymous Jason left this comment at October 25, 2007 11:06 AM  
    Interesting take on Fred Thompson. I must confess that I'm pretty ignorant of the Republican primary race.

    I did hear something interesting, though:

    On a left-wing radio talk show, a right-wing caller was extolling Ron Paul's virtues. He said that Ron Paul is the only Republican who's opposed to the Iraq war.

    This won him major points with me, although I'll probably still vote for a liberal candidate for other reasons.

    It's always good to hear a real back-and-forth exchange on a political talk show.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at October 25, 2007 1:50 PM  
    Jason,
    Principled libertarians usually oppose all wars that aren’t absolutely necessary for the survival of a free republic, because, as a rule, wars tend to make governments grow.

    If you’re willing to sacrifice the vote that would have gone to someone in your own party, please consider voting for Paul in your state’s primary, at least. In a closed-primary state (such as California) you will have to change your official party registration to Republican in plenty of time for that election.

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