Monday, September 10, 2007

Campaign '08 Hermeneutics

Fred Thompson seems to have inspired more than a few scratching heads when he mentioned in Iowa last week that an Al Queda prescribed smoking ban in Anbar province helped turn the local population against the terrorists.

For the sake of argument, we'll temporarily grant him that point.

If it's really the case that Thompson isn't actually a space cadet when it comes to foreign policy, then he's got a much bigger problem on his hands: he's a poor communicator. He may just be rusty out on the stump at the moment, but if the guy has any hopes of channeling a potential resemblance to Ronald Reagan he can't afford to start relying the conservative print press to parse his words for him ex post facto.

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