Monday, May 7, 2007

Thompson's Trial Ballon

In case you missed it, you can still watch Fred Thompson's much-anticipated speech on Friday to the Lincoln Club:



Jonathan Martin rates the performance "low key and at times meandering," and Bob Novak calls it "lackluster." Meanwhile, the Hotline's Marc Ambinder notices an interesting difference between the prepared speech and what Thompson delivered:


As he spoke, [Thompson] edited the prepared text of what seemed on an initial read to be an unremarkable collection of paragraphs, replacing clichés with folksy gerunds, anecdotes and stories.

Here is a section from the prepared tax:

"That's why the economy booms when taxes are cut. When the Kennedy tax cuts were passed in the 1960s, the economy boomed. When Reagan cut taxes in 1981, we went from economic malaise to a new morning in America. And when George Bush cut taxes in 2001, he took a declining economy he inherited to an economic expansion—despite 9/11, the NASDAQ bubble and corporate scandals."

Here is Thompson’s rendition:

“You see 1981, when Ronald Reagan lowered taxes and turned malaise into, ah, prosperity. You’ve seen when George W. Bush did the same thing in 2001, took a declining economy which he inherited and turned it around to a good thing, a positive economy that we’re still enjoying here today, despite 9/11, despite what was going on Wall Street, the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble They overcame all of it.”

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