I'm Depressed

Here's a decent take on Fred Thompson, post-departure, over at the Weekly Standard. It made me more depressed than I already was, considering what we've lost with Fred's decision to pull out of the race. It's a bit digressive at points (several paragraphs on the non-campaigning campaigns of 1800's-era candidates? Really?), but worth a read. Take-home snippet, for me anyways:

Thompson didn't give off the usual political vibe: the gnawing need to please, the craving for the public's love. A few voters and journalists found this refreshing, many more found it insulting. Some just found it fascinating, in a clinical sort of way: What kind of politician isn't consumed by politics--and what kind of campaign would such a politician run? Well, now we know. If Thompson could plausibly avoid an overnight campaign trip, he did, preferring to return home to his wife and children in suburban Virginia. He spent an inordinate amount of time with his briefing books. And his response to the chore of raising money--the chief occupation of every office-seeker in this era of campaign finance reform, which was intended to reduce the role of money in politics--seemed nearly pathological. Fundraising events scheduled to last two or three hours often guttered out when the candidate departed after twenty minutes. High-end donors complained of being uncourted, unpampered, unloved--even unphoned. At one party in a private home last year, Thompson made the rounds of money-shakers, delivered brief remarks, and then slipped into a bedroom to watch a basketball game on TV by himself.

Now I'm all sad again. If my gentle readers will indulge me in a moment of almost ronpaulian political delusion, perhaps I can express the faint hope that a brokered convention will re-draft Fred Dalton Thompson as the Republican nominee for President?