Notable, misquotable?
A piece in USA Today, later revised somewhat, said that Fred Thompson “isn’t that interested” in running for President, and that he “will not be devastated” if he doesn’t win:
Bill Theobald of Gannett News Service has been following Republican Fred Thompson around Iowa. In a dispatch today from Burlington, Bill quotes the former Tennessee senator as saying he doesn’t like modern campaigning, isn’t that interested in running for president and “will not be devastated” if he doesn’t win.
Now here’s a longer piece from a transcript of the episode:
Q: My only problem with you and why I haven’t thrown all my support behind you is that I don’t know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?…
A: That is a very good question, not because it’s difficult to answer, because, but I’m gonna answer it in a little different way than what you might expect. In the first place, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t. I grew up very modest circumstances. I left government, I and my family have made sacrifices for me to be sitting here today. I haven’t had any income for a long time because I’m doing this. I figure that to be clean you’ve got to cut everything off. And I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a TV show, I had a contract with ABC Radio like I was talking about earlier and so forth. I guess a man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family which is not a joyful thing at all if he didn’t want to do it. But I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don’t do it. I want the people to have the best president that they can have.
The USA Today piece seems to have mischaracterized Senator Thompson’s remarks (though perhaps not, according to another report). But in doing so the piece raised an interesting question as to whether being “consumed by personal ambition” such that a loss would be “devastating” is any kind of good thing at all. USA Today seems to think that it is a good thing for the country. We don’t.
Which of the current crop of candidates, Democrat and Republican alike, would be capable of abjuring personal power and returning quietly to private life, as George Washington famously did? We don’t know about you, but we are pretty tired of the rather obvious lean and hungry look in the eyes of most of the presidential contenders.
UPDATE
Senator Thompson makes a similar point about George Washington in this long video: