GOP may cast actor into a starring role

WASHINGTON -- Fred Dalton Thompson was cast as president only once, in the short docudrama made by former senator Sam Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative and titled "Last Best Chance." The choice of Thompson to play the chief was made by politicians, not casting directors.

Producers have tended to cast Thompson in lesser positions, as a Washington staffer, an agency director, or an aide -- where his burly physique and darting eyes communicate a political awareness and furtiveness.

It's a staple of Hollywood thrillers about Washington that the audience doesn't know which government character is corrupt and which is a true-blue American until the final reel. On screen, Thompson usually ended up on the side of good, but his true motivations remained mysterious until the last minute.

Now, some Republicans are looking at Thompson and asking their own version of, "Is he or isn't he?" The question this time is whether Thompson, whose non acting career included eight years in the real-life US Senate, is serious about running for president. If he is, he just might find a willing audience -- and get another shot at the role he played in "Last Best Chance."

Democrats may have nailed down the support of Hollywood, but Republicans love actors. In a period of intense Reagan nostalgia on the right, it makes sense that many would view Thompson as someone to save them from an uninspiring field of presidential candidates.

This is the season when some people who want to be president ponder a late entrance (such as Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker), while others who aren't sure they want to run for president get pestered to join the race.

This drama is especially intense in Tennessee, where the Volunteer State politician who wanted to run, former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, got drummed out of the race after the GOP lost the Senate last year, and two who aren't sure -- former vice president Al Gore and Thompson -- are being bugged by their parties to get in.

Thompson has said, "I'm giving some thought to it. Going to leave the door open."

At some point, though, the music stops and candidates end up in or out. While Gore is so well known he could enter the race late and still be effective, Thompson's political stances are far less well known than his legal stances playing the district attorney on "Law and Order."

His Senate career offers a few clues -- but only a few -- as to his thinking. He was a party-line Republican except when it came to imposing restrictions on campaign finance. Most Washington Republicans hate campaign-finance restrictions, both on principle (they limit political speech) and, for some, expediency. (They make it harder to raise money.)

In fact, a good case can be made that the campaign finance restrictions have done more to put money front and center in politics than to take it out of politics. But that's not generally how the public sees it.

Thompson's pro campaign-finance stance seems based on his view of Washington as ripe for corruption and vulnerable to the power of special interests. (Has he watched too many of his own movies?) This philosophy identifies the 64-year-old Thompson more with the Western branch of the Republican Party, led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, than the Southern branch, led by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the leading opponent of campaign finance reform.

Southern Republicans are more likely to be statists, respectful of established sources of power. They are also more receptive to the exercise of government power, whether in the form of restrictions on personal conduct or of prolonged military engagements. Western Republicans don't buy it. A passion for small government and a caution about overseas military entanglements tend to define their thinking.

Tennesseans stand on the border between South and West. So it may be significant that Thompson, who carries the air of someone comfortable in Washington horse trading -- and has played wheeler-dealers in the movies -- is actually somewhat skeptical of the capital and its ways of doing business.

It's especially important to know where Thompson deviates from the Republican crowd because so many Washington insiders are looking to him, with his actor's charisma and ability to command the stage, to step in and become the spokesman for the traditional GOP agenda.

Those insiders pushing for Thompson's entry into the race may know little more than the general public about what he'd really do as president. They, too, know him mostly from television and the movies.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.