Inside Fred Thompson's head

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By Linda Douglass, National Journal.com

updated 4:55 p.m. ET Sept. 6, 2007

WASHINGTON - Voters may be familiar with the Fred Thompson they've seen on TV: the rugged bearing, the bloodhound eyes, the honey-baked drawl. But do they know what he stands for, what he thinks? What's in Fred's head?

A review of Thompson's record and public statements reveals him to be a small-government conservative who has moved rhetorically rightward on social issues. He also positions himself as a defense hawk, believes Americans are safer when armed and thinks the growing alarm about global warming is, well, a little silly.

At the heart of Thompson's views is his belief in federalism and his conviction that most decisions should be left to the states. He told FOX News' "Hannity and Colmes" in May, "I believe, generally speaking, that the federal government ought to concentrate on the enumerated powers" -- that is, powers laid out in the Constitution such as imposing taxes, printing money and providing for national defense. In the Senate, he voted consistently to limit the federal government's reach.

On other issues, Thompson's views appear to have grown more conservative over time.

Abortion. "I am pro-life. I have a 100 percent voting record on the pro-life issues," Thompson also said in the May interview on FOX. He has argued that Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that gave women the right to have an abortion, should be overturned, calling it "bad law and bad medicine" on another FOX News show. But he believes the federal government's role should be limited; in June, he told a newspaper that abortion is "a matter that should go back to the states. When you get back to the states, I think the states should have some leeway." Thompson also told the Weekly Standard that he opposes a constitutional amendment banning abortion.

MSNBC video Thompson in Iowa on presidential run Sept. 6: Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson tells a cheering Iowa crowd, "This is the first event of the first day of our campaign for the president of the United States." MSNBC

Lately, his pro-life language has taken on a sharper edge. In June, he told a pro-life group that so-called partial birth abortion is "infanticide." He said he opposes stem cell research on pro-life grounds: "I am for adult stem cell research, not research where the embryos of unborn children are destroyed." The National Right to Life organization, which has always backed Thompson, calls him "a strong pro-life candidate."

Still, some less-than-certain abortion views lurk in his past statements and activities. The Los Angeles Times turned up records indicating that, as a lawyer 16 years ago, Thompson was paid $4,790 to do a little lobbying work for an abortion-rights group. Reporters combing through Thompson's personal papers, now housed at the University of Tennessee, found a 1994 questionnaire in which Thompson said, "The ultimate decision on abortion should be left with the woman and not the government."

And Newsweek came across a 1994 interview that Thompson gave to a Tennessee paper in which he called himself "certainly pro-life" but added, "I'm not willing to support laws that prohibit early term abortions.... It comes down to whether life begins at conception. I don't know in my own mind if that is the case, so I don't feel the law ought to impose that standard on other people."

Immigration. Thompson has become an immigration hawk, saying in June that it's time to forget about so-called comprehensive immigration "until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders -- or at least made great headway." This spring, he told a Republican group, "This is our home, and we get to decide who gets to come into our home."

But here, too, there are glimmers of the Thompson whose Senate image was more moderate. Last year he told a FOX News interviewer that "there is no easy solution" to immigration. "You're either going to drive 12 million people underground permanently, which is not a good solution. You're going to get them all together and get them out of the country, which is not going to happen. Or you're going to have to, in some way, work out a deal where they can have some aspirations of citizenship, but not make it so easy that it's unfair to the people waiting in line abiding by the law," he said.

This year, he told FOX he was not talking about "amnesty or [anything] blanket like that. But figure out some way to make some differentiation between the kind of people that we have here."

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