Video clip of Sen. Fred Thompson with wife Jeri and kids

You may or may not already seen this two minute 40 second video of a statement former Sen. Fred Thompson gave on June 14, 2007, to the National Right to Life conference, but I only came across it tonight. Nothing in it surprised or distressed me. I find myself warming more to this man with pretty much every additional exposure.

It starts off, however, with a short sequence in which Fred introduces his wife Jeri and their two young children, 4-year-old Heyden and infant Sammy. None of them speak, and they're quickly out of the shot — off, explains Fred, to a birthday party for one of Heyden's friends. But if you want to decide whether the age difference between Fred Thompson and his wife utterly creeps you out, to the point that you can't imagine yourself or anyone else voting for you, this video may be more useful to you for that purpose than the various still pix (for example, here, here, and here).

Would you think he's her father and their grandfather if you saw them all together at a restaurant? Yeah, probably; and the age difference is assuredly enough that he could be. But does he strike you like some sort of power-mad white slaver who's lured this poor young thing into his clutches so he can exploit her? I'm sure he likes showing her and the kids off; but did he marry her, and start a new family, primarily for the purpose of being able to show them off? That's not my reaction, as a male and father of four who's a little closer to her age than to his.

But decide for yourself. We're talking brain-stem reactions here, not cerebral cortex (except as it evaluates brain-stem reactions and then tries to crystal-ball some electoral projections based on them). 

Meanwhile, K-Lo at The Corner writes that when Mark Levin (who I cannot stand to listen to, sorry) asked as his first question of Sen. Thompson on Levin's radio show, "Is Hillary Clinton Bill Clinton's trophy wife?" the former senator, soon to be candidate, "wisely didn't answer, but used his good 'I thought I was the trophy husband' line." I wish I could take credit for inspiring that line, but I'm sure it occurred to Sen. & Mrs. Thompson long before I used it here.