Fred Thompson (1942-2015): Lawyer, Senator, Actor, All-American With a Lot of Class

When you looked at Fred Thompson making small talk in a room full of Washington types, he looked like a Washington classic—only more so.  He could be a senator, maybe even a president.

The reason was fairly simple.  He was a big guy, physically but also charismatically.  Thompson was a senator—from Tennessee, 1994–2003, taking over Al Gore’s seat. He wanted to be president and so he ran for the office, but it didn’t work out.  

In television and films, Thompson also played presidents and lawyers and political operatives, a long-time district attorney on TV’s “Law and Order.” A big man in a big suit, he stood 6 foot, 5 inches and was not too thin. 

The thing of it was that when you look at Fred Thompson—who died Nov. 1 at the age of 73 after a recurrence of lymphoma—you saw an American type, which he played and was that, too.  He talked in a folksy way, with a bit of a drawl, which took nothing away from his imposing look, or the fact that he was a highly educated attorney. It was as a lawyer that he got his first taste of fame, as chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, headed by fellow Tennessean and Republican, Sen. Howard Baker. It was Thompson who asked the critical question of White House aide Alexander Butterfield whether or not there were any listening devices in the president’s office.

We all know the answer, and what happened.  The whole nation had been thinking about nothing but Nixon and Watergate.  Before there was any other kind of gate, there was Watergate, and it shot Thompson’s name into the limelight.

When he ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008, he acknowledged that, for the first time, he had not achieved success politically. When he was a senator from Tennessee in the 1990s, he noted that congress had become more partisan than in the past.

On television, and in movies, Thompson was almost never out of a suit—he was in some ways or another, an authority figure.  He filled the role of New York District Attorney easily and with power, even Sam Waterson’s prosecutor rarely tangled with him. He did tangle with Clint Eastwood in the film, “In The Line of Fire,” as a political operative. 

What Thompson really was was a classic American figure from a small-town Southern upbringing, who played basketball, went to college, became a lawyer, raised children, became a little famous, and then a lot more. In Washington, D.C., it was clear he’d acquired a lot of political and personal polish—he wasn’t just imposing, he carried class around like a really light but expensive suit.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a pretty classy guy and fellow Tennessean himself, said, according to the Washington Post, that Thompson was one “of our country’s most principled and effective public servants.”

Thompson also had a sense of humor. His  memoir was entitled “Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir of Growing Up and Second Chances.”