Remember way back, oh, in 2000? When one of the candidates for president was really wonky and verbose and put everyone to sleep; and the other was dumb as a box of rocks and couldn’t name a single leader of any other country but had an aw-shucks-just-a-regular-guy kind of persona?
Which do you wish had become president now?
Remember back to those days, when George Bush didn’t know a damned thing and didn’t care. And now read this little list from Salon’s Tim Grieve and tell me if you sense history repeating.
Sept. 6, 2007: “Fred Thompson says a top challenge for the next president is fixing Social Security. Asked how his ideas for overhauling the system differ from those of George W. Bush, the actor and former Tennessee senator says: ‘I don’t even remember the details of his plan.'”
Sept. 7, 2007: Asked how he would handle Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida differently than George W. Bush has, Thompson said: “Muslims have been carrying on against us for some time. We didn’t pay much attention to it for a while but we are now and we’re finding there’s a global war going on against us. And we better figure out a way to contain it because it’s going to be with us for a long time after Iraq.”
Sept. 13, 2007: Asked about the concept of a national catastrophic disaster insurance fund to help with hurricanes and the like, Thompson told voters in Florida: “I don’t know enough about it yet … I’ll give it serious consideration.”
Sept. 13, 2007: “Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Thursday he doesn’t know enough about efforts by President Bush and Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive to have an opinion on the right-to-die case that stirred national debate.”
Sept. 22, 2007: “Asked about the Jena Six case today on his way into a San Antonio fundraiser, Thompson said, ‘I don’t know anything about it.'”
Sept. 27, 2007: Thompson, who made his support for the death penalty a major part of his 1994 Senate campaign, said Thursday that he didn’t know that a federal judge had ruled last week that lethal injection procedures in his home state were unconstitutional. “Thompson also told reporters he was unaware that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed this week to consider a Kentucky case about whether lethal injection violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.”
