The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

A wise man explains to them ... "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant."

Here's a tale out of school which describes the kind of man Thompson is: One day in the week leading up to the South Carolina primary the campaign office in McLean, Virginia asked if he would record a video thanking supporters for helping to have raised over a million dollars from the day after the Iowa caucuses to that point.

This video was obviously going to be a veiled pitch to send in more money - a point not lost on Thompson even though the script I wrote never mentioned it.

He told me he wasn't going to record it. Knowing we were facing an uphill climb to stay in the race, and knowing the video would tempt viewers to donate to help the campaign to go onto Florida and February 5th, he said, "I am not going to ask for money under false pretenses."

...Thompson was a unique candidate shackled inside a cookie-cutter campaign. In this era of authenticity, communications and strategy people need to be prepared to sell the candidate as he actually is, no matter what that might be. If the goal was to showcase Thompson as substantive, then the remedy was to do two and three hour long town hall meetings. Instead, we had perfunctory campaigning that fatally undercut the substance argument.

I think the central lesson to be gleaned from the Thompson campaign is “trust your instincts.” [...] He promised us a different type of campaign that would use the Internet to end-run the liberal media.

This electrified the activist class and earned him virtually instantaneous frontrunner status. So what happens next? Everyone associated with the strategy that made Thompson the frontrunner is either fired or resigns, and is replaced by largely by conventional Washington insiders. [...] The Fred Thompson from the Michael Moore video was the real deal, and post-September, he never showed up.
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Ultimately, the story of the Fred Thompson campaign will be one of authenticity and grassroots potential wasted on a cookie-cutter Washington campaign.

While the pundits will discuss and debate exactly where the campaign went wrong, the one thing I believe they misunderstand is the way the Internet could have, and should have, shaped this campaign. That misunderstanding contributed to the "Fred is lazy" storyline early on.

The campaign still had to do the things necessary to win - talking to, registering, IDing, and mobilizing voters. Nobody questioned that. That the campaign strategy was written off as "relying entirely on the Internet" was simply not accurate. The idea, from my perspective, was to harness the power of the Net to build a robust community that would become an integral part of the ground game.
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Unfortunately, the staff turnover that began in the late summer had an almost immediate effect on the Internet operation. As the Communications team focused on traditional media tactics, their attention increasingly turned away from the Internet. The commentaries became less frequent, online initiatives were no longer part of the equation.
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I'm afraid that the withdrawal of Fred Thompson will lead people to conclude that the model was wrong. I really don't feel it was.

As I said, I think the Thompson Internet operation, in the early days, and in the final days, was really second to none. Political campaign professionals should study the Thompson effort not as a case study in what went badly, but as an example of what was going very well, and could have been extraordinary had it not been for the media's obsessive demand for 'the tried and true tactics of the 1980s'.

In retrospect, I suspect that the critics who said he started too late were right, though not for the reasons that most posited. Fred was correct when he quipped on Leno that the American people would not hold it against him that he waited a few months to officially declare. Everybody I know, however, underestimated how important it is to have political allies lined up ahead of time.

Most of the leading candidates were working behind the scenes for years, making unofficial deals with the people in every state who know how to wield influence and mobilize the rank and file. Fred, on the other hand, honestly never lusted for the power of the presidency. He agreed, upon significant urging, to run because he believed it was the right thing to do for his children and the country. Politics, however, apparently requires more.
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The consensus of GOP insiders in Florida seems to be that it may have been impossible for Fred to create that organization so late in the game. Romney, Giuliani and McCain had already cherry-picked the best and the brightest; especially Romney. I’ve heard from people who had committed to other candidates well in advance of the campaigns but deeply regretted not having been able to join the Thompson Team without breaking promises. Ultimately, I think, this disadvantage proved to be insurmountable.

Throughout the campaign, when reporters enquired about Thompson's commitment to the race because of what Espo and/or Sidoti called his "laid-back style" I answered the same way: "If you're looking for a guy who is going to put on a Clarabell wig and a red nose and jump on stage singing show tunes, you've got the wrong guy."

It is strange that the qualities we are looking for in a sitting President - thoughtful, calm, and serious - are exactly the qualities which we penalize in those running for President.

It was a great ride. I'm sorry it's over.