Fred Thompson and Conservative Deprivation Syndrome

Last week's weirdest little phenomenon was Fred Thompson's 12% support among Republicans after hinting in one interview that he might run for President. Because Thompson's paper-thin resume is limited to stints as former Watergate Committee Counsel for the Republicans, gravel-voiced actor, and invisible Senator from Tennessee, it's difficult for anyone outside conservative circles to view him as a serious presidential candidate. But then again, the same was the case with Rudy Giuliani.

How did Thompson became so appealing so quickly? What do conservatives see in Thompson? Why did support for Giuliani and Romney sink so quickly as Thompson rose?

I have an answer: Conservative Deprivation Syndrome, or CDS, a disorder that characterizes large numbers of Republicans. One characteristic that distinguishes conservatives from liberals is their strong orientation toward iconic movie-type phrases like Clint Eastwood's "make my day," George W. Bush's "bring it on," or Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall." It's difficult for those on the left to recite these phrases without lapsing into satires like The Colbert Report, but conservatives have a strong desire to see iconic speech reflected in American society and politics. When conservatives can't see iconoic speech and American reality as matching, they feel deprived and seek ways to make up the deprivation. It's this sense of deprivation that I'm calling "Conservative Deprivation Syndrome."

One of the major symptoms of CDS is "movie iconitis," a phenomenon that explains the current appeal of Fred Thompson. In an ideal conservative world, an American president would be as committed to piety and laissez-faire as Calvin Coolidge and as aggressive in foreign policy as Theodore Roosevelt. Such an ideal president would be a perfect embodiment of a pre-jazz, pre-1960's America. He would talk tough, use inspiring words, accomplish his foreign policy objectives quickly and cleanly, and roll back the New Deal and the Warren Court. His accomplishments would give iconic status to his words and make him conservative beacon for generations like Winston Churchill.

George W. Bush looked like a potential candidate for ideal president status with his ostentatious piety, tax cuts, and disrespect for the federal bureaucracy. But the internal bickering within the Bush administration, failure of the Iraq War, and Republican scandals have made Bush such a strong disappointment for conservativers that there is doubt on the right that the conservative vision can succeed in America. That's one of the reasons why conservatives like Dinesh D'Souza and Michael Savage are going back to blaming 9-11 on American culture. They're losing faith that American culture could ever turn back to conservatism and feel deprived of what they see as their culture.

This explains the initial attraction of conservatives for a guy like Fred Thompson. In cop shows, action movies, and westerns, iconic words are reflected dramatically in victories over mushy liberals, rigid bureaucrats, and the forces of crime and international terrorism. For many conservatives, the movies and television are a better place for embodying their political aspirations than the world of American politics and society. A good example of the importance of movies can be seen in Harvey Mansfield's Manliness where the main models for conservative manhood are John Wayne movies and Gary Cooper's High Noon.

As a guy whose current reputation is primarily as a tough-guy prosecutor, Fred Thompson can represent the merging of iconic gestures and the real world (although a fictional real world) in a way that conservatives feel deprived of in politics.

In other words, Fred Thompson is appealing because he provides some satisfactions for the yearnings that characterize Conservative Deprivation Syndrome.