On the Outside Track

Picture this: Somewhere in downtown Washington, D.C., around a nondescript conference table, a bunch of Insiders (known as political consultants) get together to brainstorm the best way to package the presidential candidacy of an Outsider (known as Fred Thompson). Never mind that the candidate has spent most of his career in Washington—as a Senate aide, then as a senator, and later, as a lobbyist. After all, he's now best known as an actor who played a district attorney on TV. And he once campaigned for political office by driving around Tennessee in a red pickup. So, how to distinguish Thompson from the rest of the pack, in which claims to Outsider-ism are rampant? The game plan:

— Get in the race late, but say your opponents got in early.

— Announce your candidacy on Jay Leno's show, while the others debate in New Hampshire.

— Wink at the voters in a TV ad during that GOP debate.

— Then explain why you want to be president—on the Web.

Brilliant! A way to enter the presidential race without actually engaging face to face with any Republicans. Why endanger your second-place showing in the polls by risking contact with competitors and voters? Indeed, the Thompson entry goes beyond the strategy of staying "above the fray"; he skipped the fray completely. The fray is for the other guys, the ones who live in the political world. He's so over that. As he told Leno, no voter is going to look at his post-Labor Day entry and say: "That guy would make a very good president, but he just didn't get in soon enough." Great line. Wonder who wrote it?

It's not as if Thompson is the only candidate to position himself as the preferred Outsider. It's a rampant pose because of the obvious: Washington is so unpopular. And Republicans, naturally tethered to President Bush (also unpopular), are even more eager to declare independence. John McCain, who once owned the maverick label—until he turned to the GOP establishment for his support—is now back as the Real Deal, claiming to hold the original Outsider recipe. Actually, that credit belongs to Ronald Reagan, who even remained a Washington Outsider while living in the White House—a pretty neat trick.

Reagan didn't have to appear on late-night talk shows to cement his image, but now that's the reflex action—the easy fast track to the Outside rail. Leno and David Letterman have together hosted all of the top-tier candidates. And it's not just the Republicans. Barack Obama seems like a semiregular on The Daily Show and the rest of the late-night circuit. When Leno asked him last December whether he had indeed inhaled when he used marijuana, the candidate replied, "That was the point." Doesn't get much more Outside than that—or more different from, say, someone named Clinton.

The Oprah factor. And, by the way, if you're Obama, why seek out the Sunday talk-show circuit when you have Oprah Winfrey on your side? Not only has she endorsed Obama, but the Washington Post reports that she is also talking with his advisers about a more active role in the campaign. Forget the fact that she's raising millions for him; Oprah on the stump—or, better yet, appearing in Obama's TV ads—is priceless. She's not just another celebrity or another popular Outsider; she's a guru for millions of women. And those are the voters both Hillary Clinton and Obama are looking to attract.

But there is a key difference in the self-promotion of Obama and Clinton: Obama's couch chats are all about his status as a "different" kind of candidate; hers are all about softening her image—and perceptions of her marriage. (Ellen DeGeneres: Does Bill take care of the house? Hillary: ... I will come home late at night, and he will be rearranging bookshelves or cleaning the kitchen. He is pretty handy to have around, actually.) And one more thing about Hillary: She's the rare candidate who is not playing the Outsider card. In fact, she's actually out there defending the expediency of knowing how to play the Inside game. That's her story, and she's sticking to it.

Fred Thompson, meantime, is telling another story. He's the guy who didn't spend his life thinking about the presidency; he's the candidate who disdains the political process. Or he may be, as one Mitt Romney adviser smirks, "just a guy who wants to run a new kind of campaign that doesn't require him to work that hard." Like it or not, he's in. And working on his latest script—one-liners at a time.