Fred's Finally In

It looks like Fred Thompson is getting in. Politico's Jonathan Martin is reporting that he'll tell supporters this afternoon that he's announcing formally next week. Well, no shock here. Maybe we'll all be living under the Thompson presidency in 18 months but forgive me for being skeptical. For him to get going here, he's going to have to crush the other candidates in the debates--to show Republicans he's by far the best communicator/chance of winning they have. Nothing he's done to date in this nascent, pre campaign suggests to me that he's going to be able to pull that off. I thought his last Leno appearance--apparently he's going to go on again next week--was flat, at best. . Maybe his actor-lawyer-lobbyist-senator story is going to be so compelling that Republicans fall all over themselves to follow him, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The most interesting thing to me is the hinting he's made about taking on entitlements. Will he try to revive the president's partial privatization plan? Will he talk cuts? If he brings it up, he'll have gotten past the happy talk about tax cuts that the rest of the GOP field is talking.