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Source: http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/382916.html
WASHINGTON -- Fatherhood and ambition.
In Fred Thompson's life, they rise and fall together, a recurring couplet in the nostalgic story of a Tennessee fella who's guided more by life's surprises and others' expectations than he is by any master plan.
Consider:
The small-town jock who, at 17, upon getting his high school girlfriend pregnant, married her, heeded her politically connected family and made something of himself.
The divorced U.S. senator, lawyer, lobbyist and actor who dropped out of politics when one of his three grown children died from a prescription drug overdose.
The unlikely 65-year-old comeback kid, now remarried with a 4-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy, who's running for the Republican nomination for president.
On the campaign trail, Thompson treats criticism that he doesn't have enough fire in the belly with a father-knows-best attitude.
"I've had the worst thing that can happen to a father and the best thing that can happen to a father," Thompson told retirees in the fall in South Carolina.
Big on parenting
Two of Thompson's most important experiences played out in the public eye: the Watergate hearings and his 1985 movie debut, Marie. But with voters, he talks about parenting as much as he does about politics and acting.
Seeing daughter Hayden's sonogram strengthened his anti-abortion views, he says. Wanting a stable world for his second family helped nudge him to run.
Thompson has children older than his wife, Jeri, 41, and younger than his grandchildren. His progeny span two generations.
Thompson was born in Alabama and graduated from Memphis State University and Vanderbilt University law school while working and raising children.
He worked on a congressional campaign, as a federal prosecutor and for the re-election of Tennessee Republican Sen. Howard Baker Jr. Baker became a powerful mentor. He gave Thompson job as chief Republican counsel on the committee investigating Watergate.
Thompson got national exposure, a book deal and an anti-corruption reputation that drew clients to his new law practice.
Acting career
There was a book about the case, then a movie with Sissy Spacek -- Marie -- in which Thompson played himself. That launched his career as an actor even as he kept a hand in on Capitol Hill.
Celebrity eased Thompson's election to an open Senate seat; he replaced Tennessee's Al Gore, who became Bill Clinton's vice president.
Serving from 1994 through 2002, Thompson got mixed reviews. He was a reliable Republican vote, but critics said he lacked the appetite for the long hours and tedium and didn't leave much of a legacy.
In the final year of Thompson's Senate career, his daughter Betsy, who had bipolar disorder, died from what was deemed an accidental overdose of painkillers.
Thompson went back to acting, and making money, as fictional District Attorney Arthur Branch on TV's Law & Order. He also gave up the single life, marrying Jeri, whom he'd met years earlier while grocery shopping.
About that time, Thompson was diagnosed with nonfatal lymphoma, which required chemotherapy.
Appetite for politics
But he had a new appetite for GOP politics. He helped manage Chief Justice John Roberts' confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2005, was chairman of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board and championed President Bush's commutation of White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence in the CIA leak case -- all while taping the crime series and working for ABC Radio.
With the encouragement of Jeri, Baker and Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Thompson decided to run.Thompson's image and message are selling points, and so is his personal experience of "raising a second family in a different generation than the first," Wamp said.
Fred Thompson
Republican
Early years
Born: 1942 in Sheffield, Ala.; raised in Lawrenceburg, Tenn.
Education: Bachelor's degree, Memphis State University, 1964; law degree, Vanderbilt University, 1967
Career
1969-72: Assistant U.S. attorney
1973-74: Minority counsel, Senate Watergate Committee
1975-93: Lobbyist, lawyer
1977: Took on a Tennessee Parole Board case that exposed a cash-for-clemency scheme that toppled the governor
1987-present: Actor; has appeared in 18 films, including The Hunt for Red October, and has played the district attorney on TV's Law & Order since 2002
Political career
1994-2002: U.S. senator from Tennessee
2007: Announced candidacy for president
Sources: Draft Fred Thompson President 2008, Internet Movie Database
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