by WonkoKevin

Fred Thompson is getting criticism today in Wonkosphere for having a pretty light campaign schedule, only two weeks after jumping into the race.  His schedule this week consists of three fundraisers and no ”public” campaign stops.

The buzz was enhanced by Thompson’s response to a question about healthcare: “It’s allowing us to live healthier lives and to live longer,” Mr. Thompson, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, said at a Jaycee park here. “That’s good news. But we have more retired folks. I hope to become one of them one of these days.”  Nervous laughter from the audience.  “Not too soon,” he added hastily.

I wondered if the criticism was justified.  Certainly part of the critique is the fact that it’s only the third week of his campaign, and he’s already fighting accusations of being lazy.  So I looked around at the candidates’ sites for their schedules.  You would figure that every candidate would want you to know where they’re going to be, but you would be wrong–schedule information is surprisingly sparse.  So who knows, maybe they’re all being lazy this week… But Mitt Romney did have an online schedule, and over the next 7 days Romney has 17 fundraisers and 3 public events (and perhaps more that are unlisted).  Likewise I found that John McCain had 8 fundraisers and 2 public events scheduled this week.

I saw Thompson on C-SPAN make some comments to a small crowd in Iowa last week, and I’ll be blunt–he needs practice.  In Politics 2.0 these get-togethers have influence beyond the attending audience, and Thompson has got to gain skill at working these crowds or else he doesn’t have a chance.  Thompson is obviously experienced in working audiences and getting elected, but for whatever reason he appears meandering and unenthusiastic right now.  The only way out of that box is practice, practice, practice, and better to do it now than in November or December. 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under Romney, Fred Thompson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.