I have a piece on Time.com raising the curtain on Fred Thompson’s announcement tonight that he is, offocially and finally, a candidate in the GOP presidential primary. Yes, he’s appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno rather than in Manchester at the GOP presidential primary debate hosted by Fox News’ Chris Wallace. And yes, for good measure, he’s going to draw even more attention to his absence — and try to overshadow his opponents — by airing his first campaign ad on Fox during the debate. Here’s the ad, courtesy of washingtonpost.com:
If nothing else, the Thompson campaign is showing a flair for risk by engineering his announcement in a way that seems likely to offend both New Hampshire and Fox News, the favored network of the very voters he’s trying to attract. But the purpose of appearing on Leno — and the value of appearing on Newsweek’s current cover — is to give an out-of-the-gate jolt to Thompson’s already impressive standing in national polls. Rather than build from one Iowa living room at a time, as Romney has, Thompson is trying to follow the Giuliani model — focus on garnering high numbers in national polls and hypothetical head-to-head matchups with Democrats, thereby creating the impression that he’d be a strong general election candidate. The campaign hopes that once rank and file conservatives in states like Iowa and New Hampshire realize that Thompson is both a) a strong general election candidate, and b) more of a true conservative than either Romney or Giuliani, they will flock to Fred.
That’s the strategy anyway. Who thinks it’ll work?
UPDATE: Just want to clarify that I think Holly Bailey’s cover story on Thompson for Newsweek is first rate. The exposure is good for Thompson and fits the campaign strategy, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be getting that kind of coverage during the week of this announcement. Whether he sizzles or fizzles in the fall, at the moment Thompson is inagurably a top-tier candidate for the GOP nomination.