Thompson Chooses a Campaign Manager

Fred Thompson eases closer and closer to a September 5th announcement, and has added a veteran campaign manager to the team:

Fred Thompson says the man who saved his 1994 Senate campaign is taking over his likely presidential bid.

Thompson has tapped Bill Lacy, a former strategist for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Republican National Committee, to run day-to-day operations of his committee to "test the waters" for a presidential run.

"He turned around my campaign for Senate in 1994 and, as I move toward a decision on whether to run for president, I am confident he will take our operations to the next level," Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and "Law & Order" actor, said in a statement Wednesday.

"I'm here for the long haul," Lacy said in an interview from the committee's headquarters in a Virginia suburb. He said he has taken a leave of absence from his current post as the director of the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan.

I hope this means that Thompson's wife will be backing out of the daily campaign operations. The fact that she had such a prominent role made me nervous. You need a seasoned pro in the position of guiding the campaign, and someone who is not burdened by an emotional attachment to the candidate such as you have with a spouse. A campaign pro will make decisions based on factors other than pillow talk, and I think that will be best for the campaign.