"He's dumb as hell...but he's friendly." So said Richard Nixon about Fred Thompson three decades ago, when Mr Thompson was a young lawyer working on the Watergate investigation. Now Mr Thompson is running for president, but the conventional wisdom about him has not changed much. "Dumb as hell" was obviously Tricky Dick stretching the truth, but Washington's chattering class is sure Mr Thompson is less sharp than his main rivals for the Republican nomination. Expectations for his first debate with them on October 9th were low. To meet them, "[a]ll he has to do is not drool," reckoned Roger Simon of the Politico, a Beltway newspaper. He comfortably cleared that hurdle. But there will be higher ones.
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