Byron York on Thompson
coming into his own at the last minute.
On a number of occasions, the crowd — somewhere between 300 and 400 people jammed into the ballroom — interrupted with chants of FRED! FRED! FRED! And at one point, I heard the woman standing next to me — we had talked earlier, and she was a Thompson fan from the very beginning — say, to no one in particular, “Where was this six months ago?” A few minutes later, when Thompson made an especially powerful point, she said it again.Thompson spoke without notes, and with obvious feeling. He so clearly believed what he was saying that he made an emotional connection with the crowd, and they responded with enormous enthusiasm. To everyone in the audience, Friday night in Greenville was what the Thompson campaign was supposed to be about.
If you needed further proof that Fred's his own man, how about this:
A short block later, Thompson stepped into Halfway to Habana, a cigar store. Not that many candidates would associate themselves with smoking these days, but Thompson headed straight for the walk-in humidor. He checked out a few brands and picked up a single La Gloria Cubana, a cigar made in the Dominican Republic. “I’m going to save this for later,” he told owner Paolo Varvaro as he paid at the counter. “I like to chew on them more than I do smoke them. They taste pretty good.”
The piece closes thus:
Most observers view this state as Thompson’s last stand, although his aides say simply that they don’t know what’s coming next. If he does leave the race, there will be lots of suggestions that he didn’t really want to run, that he didn’t have the taste for the frenetic campaigning that wins presidential primaries. No one beyond Thompson himself knows the answer to the first question, but there’s no doubt the latter is true; throughout the campaign, Thompson showed great impatience with some of the ridiculous demands presidential campaigns place on candidates. But on those occasions when he put himself into it fully, as he did at the Embassy Suites on Friday, Thompson left supporters wanting more — and wishing they had seen this months ago.
Reagan had a similar distaste for the trappings of Presidential campaigning when they tried to draft him in 1968. Then in '76 he came out swinging. How old is Fred?
