Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin today said GOP presidential aspirant Fred Thompson appeared to be “bored” during his time in the Senate and earned a reputation for being lazy.
“That’s sort of the inside word,” Harkin said. “That’s what people are saying. I mean, people who know him better than I are saying that.”
Thompson, a star of television’s “Law And Order” who has a long list of movie credits to his name as well, is a former U.S. senator from Tennessee. He was elected to the Senate in 1994 to fill Al Gore’s unexpired term and then cruised to re-election for a full term in 1996. But since his name began surfacing as a saviour candidate for a largely dispirited GOP, the back story floating around on Thompson is that he’s as lazy as that hang-dog countenance of his would suggest. Slate ran a piece on Thompson called “Lazy Fred.”
In a conference call with Iowa Independent and other media, Harkin said he knew Thompson and got along “all right” with him. But Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who has been in Congress since 1974 (10 years in the House before his election to the Senate in 1984), said he was never impressed with the actor’s work ethic on The Hill.
“I always thought he was kind of bored at being a senator,” Harkin said. “It’s like if he couldn’t be on center stage he just didn’t want to be a part of the process. He just acted like he was just bored all the time here. And one term and he was out of here. I guess he wanted to be a movie star or TV star, something like that. Maybe he makes a better TV star than he does legislator. That was my impression is that he just never really much cared about what was going on here, was never into trying to work things out.”
In an earlier interview with Iowa Independent and the Associated Press, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a leading presidential contender and Thompson friend, had a different take from Harkin’s:
Associated Press: What do you think of former Senator Fred Thompson’s affect on the GOP presidential field?
McCain: He’s certainly qualified. He’s already been president two or three times. (Thompson is an actor).
Iowa Independent: Just about every profile I’ve read on him says he’s lazy. That’s the knock on him. Is he lazy?
McCain: No. We’re very close friends. You know we sat next to other in the Senate. No, I certainly would not say that.
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