COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA — No more winks. No more hints. No more "testing the waters."
On his first day as a full-fledged candidate for the White House, Fred Thompson finally climbed aboard a mustard-color coach Thursday and set off across Iowa, asking Republicans for support.
The former Tennessee senator kept a light schedule: two campaign rallies, a handful of TV interviews and a pep talk to supporters at house parties around the nation.
Sticking to a tightly scripted message, Thompson emphasized traditional conservative themes on national defense and fiscal discipline.
"I am determined that we make the decisions that will leave us a stronger nation, a more prosperous nation and a more united nation, and that's why I'm running for president of the United States," he told 200 cheering Iowans at his kickoff rally in Des Moines.
Accompanying the part-time actor and former senator were his wife, Jeri, 40; their 3-year-old daughter, Hayden, sporting red ribbons on her ponytails; and their infant son, Sammy, in his mother's arms. Thompson's two grown sons from a previous marriage were not there.
Thompson, 65, summed up his biography as a common "American story." He described himself as having been "a kid of modest means in a small town, without a lot of resources or even a whole lot of ambition."
He recalled working the graveyard shift at a bicycle factory, but also dining with foreign leaders in more recent years as a politician and television star.
Notably absent from the Alabama native's sketch of his background was his three-decade history as a Washington lobbyist, a favorite topic of opponents.
Playing up the outsider's image that served him well in his two Senate campaigns, Thompson attacked unnamed politicians in the nation's capital, saying they had been "busy spending the next generation's money."
With a wave of baby boomers nearing old age, he said, rampant overspending threatens "ruination" of the economy as politicians "kick the can down the road until, presumably, their own retirement."
"My friends, we need to deliver a message to Washington that we're better than that," he said. "And you can start delivering that message by electing a president who will blow the whistle on this lack of responsibility. And I'm the guy who will do that."
"Go, Fred, go!" supporters hollered.
The crowd was relatively thin for the national launch of a celebrity's bid for the White House. "Middle of the workday," explained Robert Haus, Thompson's Iowa campaign director.
