You, sir, have a serious responsibility to fulfill. When there were a number of other conservatives considering whether they should try to fill the void in the Republican presidential field, you stepped forward and said you were the one. You said you had the fire in the belly. You sucked all the air out of the atmosphere on the right. In doing so, you pledged to run a different kind of campaign.

But if you are going to be the big man on the right, you can't be lazy. Yet you have been so. You have a responsibility to bone up on basic local issues of national import. Any old moron should know, for instance, that you can't go into Florida without having at least thought about what you would say if asked about Terri Schiavo or about the Everglades.

What catalyzes this letter is a campaign phone call I received last night. A bright young woman calling on behalf of your campaign in northern Virginia asked if I would mind listening to a message from you. Well, certainly. And then your voice came on. You said you wanted to return power to the people, to good old regular folks like me. You said it was time to take the power away from the politicians in Washington. You said we needed to return to a government of common sense. You said something about emphasizing our conservative values. And you thanked me for listening.

And that was it. There was as much substance as cotton candy, except that it was like stale, three-week-old cotton candy because the phrases were so pathetically hackneyed.

Labels: audio, fred thompson