If Thompson is elected, it says a lot about voters

Editor,

I wonder when the GOP first decided on the strategy of running actors for president. It seems that after John F. Kennedy made Richard Nixon look bad to Americans in 1960, they realized that all future presidents would be elected on, by and for TV. So, they hired a professional actor - Ronald

Reagan.

I'm sure John Wayne might have been talked into running had he not died so soon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger would certainly be on the ticket for 2008 if he was a natural citizen. So, they are nudging Fred Thompson to run instead.

The New York Times provided an idea in its Thursday edition of the campaign script Thompson will use from central casting. It is to follow the leadership screen image of Reagan, since it sold so well, by using the best Hollywood lines and shoulder shrugs to adeptly convince the public.

The fact is that Thompson is so easily recognized from "Law & Order" across the country, he doesn't have to raise early money or debate other candidates. And he gets free airtime from the plethora of reruns. If this guy does well next fall, it will say a lot about how dumbed-down U.S. voters have become. It's a pretty cynical strategy that says voters would rather deal with personalities and sound bytes than to penetrate the tough issues we face.

Well, President Bush has already shown us you don't have to have a smidgeon of intelligence to get elected and re-elected, as Jimmy Carter earlier showed that just because you are intelligent, you are not automatically competent in office. But hey, incompetence need not exclude anyone from government service if you can act.

So, what strategy should the Democrats use for 2008? It's clear that Sen. Hillary Clinton alone is not warm and fuzzy enough on TV to woo votes away from the likes of Thompson. Maybe, if she added a real TV star to the ticket, it would push her over the top. Oprah Winfrey, a sweet but largely clueless political idealist, has enough name power to help Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama win in a landslide.

If that works, there might be no end to finding popular entertainers to run for office. Our democracy can then be run on primetime and finally drive the market share. C-SPAN could intersperse live concerts and plays with the boring rhetoric on the floor from the Capitol rotunda. And then, market forces would decide who and what issues we listen to on our TVs and iPhones. That would be state-of-the-art politics for the 21st

century.

Bill Niendorff

UNM student