BACK TO THE FUTURE

David Brooks on George W. Bush in Salon, August 2, 2000:

We are lucky enough this year to have a man running for president who has not spent his life consumed by the idea that he must be president.

Mark Halperin on Fred Thompson in Time yesterday:

And like George W. Bush in 2000, he presents a decided equanimity toward his future. As he told an interviewer, "One advantage you have in not having this as [a] lifelong ambition is that if it turns out that your calculation is wrong, it's not the end of the world."

Yup, we're being sold the same line again -- if Fred Thompson gets the nomination, we're being set up for another race in which the Democrat is a sick, twisted person who wants to be president because it's a "lifelong ambition," or because of an insatiable hunger for power, while the Republican is a "regular guy" who's running as kind of a lark.

Now, you'd think everything Bush has ever done would be considered box-office poison, but no -- Thompson is seasoning his recycled Reagan with a hint of recycled Dubya. And the press (or Halperin, at least) is lapping it up.