Teaching the Pig to Dance

by Fred Thompson

  However, in 1968 I was approached about becoming the campaign manager for a fellow by the name of John T. Williams, who was running against the entrenched congressman of our district, Ray Blanton. As I indicated earlier, Blanton would prove to be another political figure whose path I would cross more than once. I was excited and honored that the powers that be of the Republican establishment in our district (both of them) thought I could do this job. Although I knew how uphill the battle would be, I had no idea how hopeless the endeavor was. The fact that they were turning to a kid just out of school to manage a congressional campaign should have been my first clue. John T. was a very nice, energetic fellow in his mid-fifties who’d served as a United States marshal. He was determined to shake every hand in the district and do his dead level best to win.

  Despite the odds, there were other issues that might have given a saner man pause. The campaign headquarters, where I would have to spend the majority of my time, was in Jackson, Tennessee, about seventy miles away. The campaign had no money at that time and I would have to sleep in the campaign headquarters. So if I took on this task, it would mean living out of a suitcase, sleeping on a couch, with low pay for a hopeless cause. Naturally, with Sarah’s blessing, I took the job.

  I spent most of my days and many of my nights on the telephone trying to raise money, scheduling the candidate, putting out fires among local bickering supporters, and filling in as a surrogate for the candidate. We finally raised enough money to put up some billboards. I decided that our theme should be “John T. Williams. To help clean up the mess in Washington.” Sound familiar? The theme may have been pretty effective, but we never got to find out. The billboards, as it turned out, were so far back off the highway, and the “To help clean up the mess in Washington” part was printed in such small letters, that you couldn’t read the words from the road.

  There was one event in that campaign that was especially significant for me. Governor Ronald Reagan of California was barnstorming for several Republican candidates across the country and made a speech for my candidate at the Coliseum in Jackson, Tennessee. As campaign manager I got to sit backstage with Governor Reagan for a few minutes before he went onstage. He turned to me and said, “What do you think I ought to tell them?” Taken by surprise, I gave him a few thoughts. I said, “I’d just acknowledge that you don’t know John T. personally but that you know what he stands for. And it’s the same thing that you stand for.” He went out and said exactly what I had suggested. So Reagan had me for life even before I really understood his philosophy. His philosophy was a bonus.

  John T. was the most energetic campaigner I’d met, but on election night I learned one of those lessons that has to be experienced firsthand before it hits home: Don’t expect to win a race against a popular incumbent congressman when you have very little money. We lost every county in the district except one. I was encouraged by the fact that we almost carried Lawrence County.

  I resumed my law practice, exhilarated by the experience but glad to get back to my profession, where results were at least somewhat related to effort. However, in 1968 something else occurred that would have a major impact on my career—the election of Richard Nixon as president. It seemed like a very faraway event and something that had nothing to do with me. Actually, the presidential election had been a watershed election for Tennessee and the South. People were becoming more and more concerned about the breakdown in law and order and civil society that we were increasingly seeing on our TV screens. These sentiments were held by many Tennessee Democrats who voted for Nixon, allowing him to carry the state.

  As the joke goes about drug users, “If you remember the 1960s, you weren’t there.” I was one of the ones who wasn’t there. As things were heating up, I was settling down. Ironically, I had missed the countercultural rebellion that was being carried out in the streets, but in a way I became a beneficiary of it.

  In 1968 a new president appointed not only all of the United States Attorneys but all of the Assistant United States Attorneys, as well. My name came up in political circles as a possible AUSA in Nashville. I was also helped by the fact that there were precious few young Republican lawyers in Middle Tennessee at that time. Early in 1969, I received an offer from the newly appointed U.S. Attorney, Charles Anderson, to become one of his five assistants in Nashville. The office had jurisdiction over forty counties in Middle Tennessee, including Lawrence County. The offer was somewhat unexpected and exciting. It had never really occurred to me that I would leave Lawrenceburg, and I received advice from some of the leading attorneys there that moving to Nashville at this stage of my career would be a mistake. I was just establishing myself, getting to know the judges and starting to develop a reputation. All of that would be set back if I went to Nashville. However, by taking the job of Assistant United States Attorney, I would be one of the higher-ranking federal legal figures in Middle Tennessee, trying federal criminal and civil cases. This was no small potatoes for a fellow who had just been out of law school for two years. Sarah and I discussed this extensively, and, as usual, we had a meeting of the minds that this looked like an adventure too interesting to pass up. However, I told A.D. of my decision with very mixed emotions and not at all sure that I was doing the right thing. He seemed to understand. Besides, I planned to get the experience and return to Lawrenceburg in a couple of years, because at heart I was a country lawyer. Of course, we never moved back, even though that “heart” part has never changed.

  Upon arriving in Nashville, I learned that I had about as much trial experience as anyone else in that office, and before long I was prosecuting most of the serious federal crime cases. I proudly displayed my certificate of appointment on my office wall. It was signed by Attorney General John Mitchell. The first time I met John Mitchell, however, was when I was interrogating him three years later in the middle of the Watergate investigation.

  PROBABLY LIKE MOST PEOPLE of my generation and younger, I am amazed at how ubiquitous smoking is in the old classic movies. It was the epitome of cool. When I watch oldies, I marvel at the old-time moviemakers’ ability to keep continuity with regard to the length of the cigarette the actor is smoking when a simple scene might be shot over a time span of hours or even days. This is part of the cost of knowing the inside of moviemaking—noticing the trivialities when trying to relax and enjoy the movie. Smart-aleck movie watchers (myself excepted, of course) and movie reviewers like nothing better than to point out that the blinds were pulled in the first part of the scene and open in the last part without anyone on-screen having opened them.

  I had to deal with the cigarette continuity problem only once in a movie. Although I never smoked cigarettes, I smoked through a scene with Alec Baldwin. (There’s no truth to the rumor that his political views drove me to it. To drink, maybe, but not to smoke.) We were doing a scene in Hunt for Red October in which I played an admiral. I had no trouble adapting. I smoked that cigarette and held it just the way that Dad always did. It was a bittersweet remembrance.

  By the time people became aware of the harmful effects of smoking, Dad had long since become addicted. Finally, after many years, common sense won out and he quit—cold turkey. Apparently, the decision had come too late.

  In 1990, when my parents were on a trip to Arizona, Dad felt a pain in his chest. He had a pretty good idea as to what the problem was. For most of his life he was a two- or three-pack-a-day man. He started out by rolling his own out of store-bought cigarette paper and a pouch of Country Gentleman tobacco.

  When the pain became severe, they turned the car around and headed home. In a remarkable feat of stamina, Dad drove straight through from Arizona to Lawrenceburg. He wanted to know, and the diagnosis was quick to follow. It was as bad as feared. When Mom told me that Dad had lung cancer, there was a feeling of unreality about it all. For a while I had trouble imagining something that Dad couldn’t handle. But over the next several months he steadily declined.

  It was the most remarkable thing. Nothing about him ch
anged. He was dying the way he lived—a little melancholy, and trying not to take things any more seriously than absolutely necessary.

  During his many days in the hospital, he struck up a friendship with one particular nurse—a portly black lady whose wit was a fair match for Dad’s. One day something came up about smoking. She said to Dad, “You know, I’m a nurse and I smoked for ten years before I could give it up.”

  Dad thought for a minute and said, “Well, I smoked heavy for about fifty years.” He paused and then said with a straight face, “And I was just getting good at it.”

  She just smiled, shook her head, and walked out of the room. She thought she was going to have a serious conversation about smoking, but there would be no mea culpas from Fletcher—not to any of us mortals, anyway.

  The decision was made to operate and remove part of one of Dad’s lungs—a substantial part, as it turned out. Immediately after the operation, they rolled him to where I and other family members were. He was barely conscious and had tubes running from everywhere. I walked beside the gurney with the doctor, a nurse, and others on the way to intensive care. As our somber procession made its way down the hall, Dad motioned to me. I could tell he wanted to write something. I gave him a pen and a scrap of paper that I had on me. With a weak and shaky hand he wrote the word SUE and handed it back to his lawyer son. To the dismay of all around me, I doubled over in laughter. And for some reason, when I showed it to the surgeon, he didn’t seem to think it was as funny as I did.

  Four months later, Dad passed away. For all those months in the hospital, Mom spent every night with him in his room, with rare exceptions. Later, she moved to Franklin, Tennessee, in the Nashville area where my brother Ken and I lived.

  It was sort of the Thompson male tradition not to share much of a personal nature about our feelings with one another. I guess we never felt the need to. I knew all I needed to know about Dad, from the lessons he taught me, but mostly by the way he lived his life. I heard Senator Sam Irvin of Watergate fame say something that stayed with me: “If you can paint a really good picture of a cow, you don’t have to write the word ‘cow’ under it.” To me, Dad had painted a really good picture of a cow. Yet there is another dimension to a person that often comes out on their best and worst days. Dad had suffered through some awful days, but he had the calm and inner strength of the proverbial Christian holding four aces, which is how he viewed himself.

  It may seem odd to revisit such a sad and painful time and emphasize the humorous things he said and did, but those are some of the things that made him the unique man that he was. When life’s absurd happenings and ironies presented themselves and seemed to require us to either laugh or cry, Fletch always chose to laugh if at all possible—or better still, make someone else laugh. It was never calculated; he never told jokes as such. His take on things was immediate and honest.

  Amid the sadness that his humor helped mask, he knew at the end that he had been a good man and done his best. Just because a man isn’t famous or doesn’t leave a lot of money doesn’t mean he doesn’t leave a legacy. A part of Dad’s is the fact that, all these years later, I often still experience situations that cause me to think, “What would Dad say about that?” And I smile.

  It was January 28, 1995. I was sitting at my desk on the floor of the United States Senate prior to delivering my maiden speech. It was in support of a bill I was cosponsoring that required members of Congress in the operation of their offices to abide by the same laws that other citizens had to follow (a revolutionary concept even then). I figured that if members of Congress had to abide by the employment, OSHA, and other laws that they imposed upon American businesses and citizens, they would be more careful in the passage of such laws. I had been sworn in a few days earlier. Someone on behalf of the leadership was droning on to an almost empty chamber about the agenda for the day. I assumed that the speaker was stalling long enough for the crowd to assemble to hear my speech. Even the section for the press corps was empty. Perhaps they had heard me speak before.

  As I gazed around the beautiful and historic surroundings, my eyes fell on the gallery above me and to my right. That’s where I had sat by myself one afternoon twenty-seven years earlier, a year out of law school. I’d come to Washington for the Young Republicans Convention at the Shoreham Hotel, but having grown weary of the organized activities there, I snuck away to watch Senators Goldwater, Humphrey, and other political giants of the day deliberate the issues. I’d been transfixed. Now instead of observing, I was participating.

  For me, the trip from the Senate gallery to the Senate floor had been a long one. I was pleased about the way things had worked out. I had been given a rare opportunity to make a difference in the direction of my country. A couple of years earlier, I had made the decision to leave a life that would have been the envy of a lot of people to win an uphill Senate campaign, and this speech was going to be the beginning of my opportunity to make a difference.

  As I got into the speech I worked in American history, the Constitution, the common sense of the American people, and why the Senate could not afford to turn its back on this important piece of legislation. I thought I was laying the groundwork for a new era of responsibility in Washington.

  As I was gathering my papers together after the speech, one of the few senators still on the floor, an older gentleman, came over to me, extended his hands in congratulations, and said, “Good speech, Fred.” It was a moment of great personal satisfaction. Then he said, “Can I ask you just one question?” “Absolutely,” I responded, prepared to defend my position. He said, “Was that a real submarine that you fellows used in Hunt for Red October?”

  There was only one fellow I knew who could have fully appreciated that story. I wish I could have told it to him.

  I GREW UP at a time when the United States was starting to reach its full potential. We were becoming the most powerful and economically successful country in the history of the world and were beginning to make real strides toward social justice. We became the symbol for freedom around the world.

  After World War II, people came off the farm and into small towns all over the South, bringing with them their independence, strong religious beliefs, and often a humorous take on life that probably helped them deal with the hard times so many of them endured.

  There was an underlying sense of optimism tempered by fatalism: “You can’t control the weather. There’ll be a better crop next year.” There were absolutes. Your word was your bond. A lot depended on it if they were going to build a civil society. There was an understanding that their life was better than their parents’ and a strong belief that their kids’ life would be better than their own. I really don’t believe that my parents’ generation thought that they “could be anything they wanted to be.” Theirs was a generation that just wanted life to be a little better than it had been. But they inculcated into the next generation—my generation—a firm belief that we could be anything we wanted to be. That belief, assumption really, has been the basis for any success I have had.

  Growing up in Lawrenceburg, I was taught that I was supposed to handle the things that I had control over and deal with the rest “like a man.”

  But I have wondered, How much do we have control over, anyway? Some people believe that everything has been predetermined by the Man upstairs. Others believe that we are all on our own. I have come down somewhere in the middle.

  Many of us feel a bit like the farmer who labored long and hard to clear what folks back home called “a new ground.” He sweated and toiled until he and his mule were exhausted and every stump was removed from the field. As he looked it over one day, the preacher pulled up and said, “My, my, the Lord sure has blessed you with a beautiful farm.”

  Trying to hide his irritation, the farmer replied, “Yes, he really did. But you should have seen it when he had it all to himself.”

  Life is a partnership. Part of it is up to Him and part of it is up to us. But unlike the farmer, we can never be certain
which part is which.

  I appreciate the interrelatedness of the choices I have made on the one hand, and luck on the other. Life presents us with a series of doors. Some are locked, some are wide open, and some are open just a bit—just enough to reveal some intriguing shadows behind them. But not quite enough to reveal exactly what that something is. Is it something wonderful or something treacherous? Is opportunity waiting or is sadness lurking? We will never know if we don’t walk through the door. Should we play it safe? There is a lot to be said for playing it safe. But safe is not very interesting. At least, I never found it to be. And it’s a lot better if we can make our decisions with a sense of confidence and optimism that comes from seeds planted in our early years.

  Then there’s the luck part. I often tell aspiring candidates, half in jest, that the most brilliant politicians are the ones whose daddy left them a fortune or who run for office in a year when their party is sweeping everything. In other words, the key is to be the beneficiary of things totally out of their control. But, of course, there’s more to luck than that.

  Being really lucky is being born in the United States to good parents. The acorn still doesn’t fall far from the tree. Our parents, the community we grew up in, and our early experiences form the core of our character, affect the decisions that we make and the course of our lives. I know this better than most.

  Even before I left Lawrenceburg, you might say I was given a second chance more than once. Every difficult kid who has grown out of it has a different story to tell. Instead of searching for any commonality between these kids, it’s probably more important to just realize that it does happen. It happens quite often. Understanding this has caused me to view kids who have underachieved, or who seemed less focused, quite differently than I otherwise might. More than once I’ve smiled and said to myself, “There goes another Freddie Thompson. I hope he is as lucky as I was.” My mistakes in life would fill another book, but I’ve been able to have multiple careers, none of which were thought remotely possible for me when I walked across the stage at high school graduation.