The Daily Background

Fred Thompson opens his mouth and says something his campaign strategists are probably irate at him over:

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson on Wednesday teased Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying “there is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year.”
[…]
Without saying Clinton’s name, he added: “There is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year, let’s all agree on that.”

Thompson continued to refer to the next president as a man who should represent conservative principles and values, and should be examined “by what he believes and by where he’s been and what he’s done.”

That’s right. He said it. Goold ole boy Fred Thompson, a former one-and-a-bit term Senator (he finished out Al Gore’s seat after Gore became Veep), long-time lobbyist turned television actor has said that there is not a single woman in America who could do a good job at being president. Not today, not tomorrow, not even “on the horizon.”

Of course, the only time Thompson has spent his public service was his Senate years, plus an extra less than three as an Assistant US Attorney, prosecuting low level bank robbery cases (his 15 seconds of Watergate fame doesn’t count since he was using the Democratic team’s crib notes and wasn’t even elected in the first place, and his tobacco lobbying years afterward certainly don’t count either). Fred’s fellow Republican Christine Todd Whitman, on the other hand, got executive experience while governor of New Jersey between 1994 and 2001, was EPA director under Bush for another few years, worked at the federal level in the Nixon Administration, has served in state governments for the better part of her life, and also has experience in business.

Or, take Democrat Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s two-term Governor. In addition to her years as the state’s top gal, she also served as Michigan’s Attorney General for a number of years (AG is an elected position in MI), served as an Assistant US Attorney for longer than Thompson, has corporate legal experience, and even was a contestant on The Dating Game.

Or, since Granholm was born in Canada and is thus ineligible to run, take Kathleen Sebelius, another Democrat, who is Kansas’ two-term governor. Sebelius served in the House for almost a decade, and also served in Kansas’ state legislature for another eight years. She worked yet another 8 years as Kansas’ insurance commissioner (a powerful elected position in her state– she pissed Blue Cross Blue Shield off quite a bit during her term there), is married to a federal judge, has been named one of the five best governors in America by TIME after she wiped out her state’s 1.1B in debt, is the chair of the Democratic Governors’ Association, and has been suggested as a possible candidate for president in her own right.

Just a couple of the many women who would be a far, far better president than Fred Thompson.

Update: Shakes adds “I’d add Madeleine Albright to that list (though she can’t run by virtue of her non-American birth) and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Nancy Pelosi, just for a start, and there are plenty of people in Thompson’s own party who believe that Libby Dole and Condi Rice should be running.”

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