Sen. Fred Thompson, center, with colleagues Carl Levin and John Glenn. All these activities should, in an ideal world, be dumbed down for mass appeal, reduced to their fundamental comedy or horror.
Summer is a full-body season, fleshy, visceral.
So far Sen. Fred Thompson's show on Capitol Hill has failed the summer standard. It's all higher-cortex stuff, and simultaneously confusing, like reading literary criticism that's badly translated from the French. Bad, bad, bad guy. Thompson himself, however, is captivating. He is rumored to be a potential presidential candidate, but the truth is that he already seems like President Thompson.