Thompson digs into policy, likes to delegate

— -- What makes a leader?

We examine this year's leading presidential candidates through that prism.

Our leadership categories are adapted from standards developed by Fred Greenstein, a Princeton scholar and author of "The Presidential Difference."

Greenstein says the modern presidency is so powerful, voters should take careful stock of the strengths and weaknesses candidates might bring to the job — from their psychology, emotional maturity and vision to the way they process information, manage and communicate.

Using Greenstein's work as a jumping-off point, we assess candidates in the following areas: political skills, communication skills, policy vision, decision-making style and management skills.

The eight profiled candidates have double-digit support in the latest national USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

Political skills

Fred Thompson is an accomplished politician who has played a variety of roles for the Republican Party:

• He helped run former Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker's campaign.

• He served as a congressional committee staff lawyer, including his famous stint as Baker's chief minority counsel for the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal.

• He has helped raise money for Republicans in Tennessee and around the country and served on government advisory committees.

He also was chairman of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board.

"He was and is a strong partisan," says Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. But he says Thompson is politically savvy enough to know when to put partisanship aside and work with Democrats.

His political skills are reflected in a successful Washington lobbying career that he pursued before running for the U.S. Senate and afterward. Among his high-profile lobbying clients were Westinghouse Electric Corp., the Teamsters and Toyota Motor Corp.

A sign of how he is regarded was President Bush's selection of him to shepherd the nomination of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts through the confirmation process. With a closely divided Senate and a highly charged partisan atmosphere, Roberts' confirmation was expected to be a tough fight. But careful cultivation of key senators — combined with Roberts' impressive resume and even-keeled performance during his Senate committee hearing — led to a surprisingly easy confirmation.

In his first Senate campaign, his first bid for public office, Thompson went from 20 points down to then-Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., to a 20-point win. His campaign — for the remaining two years of then-Vice President Al Gore's unexpired Senate seat — turned around when he changed to jeans and work shirt from suits and toured the state in a red pickup.

He is an instinctive politician rather than a calculating one, a person who talks about not always coveting advancement but who has responded to doors that have opened in his path.

At times, people have questioned his commitment and the passion that politics sometimes demands. He at first announced that he would seek a second full term in the Senate in the 2002 election then changed his mind.

Political commentators have criticized Thompson for entering the race late, for not having a rigorous public schedule and for failing to galvanize support among social conservatives.

Thompson responds that he has always done things his own way.

"I don't do frenetic," he says of the pace of his campaign. But some watchers are left perplexed.

"It's like I am dealing with this schizophrenic candidate," says Bruce Oppenheimer, political science professor at Vanderbilt University in Thompson's home state of Tennessee. "Is he the country guy driving the pickup who's really a sharp wheeler-dealer? Or is he somebody who is sort of disengaged, not very hardworking, doesn't have staying power in doing things?"

Communication skills

Fred Thompson has an informal communication style, often speaking from notes instead of reading his speeches. He is laid back and slow paced in his drawling delivery, almost the caricature of the country lawyer whose corn-pone style masks his acumen.

Thompson's communication skills are attributed to his experience on television and movies, but he never has had an acting lesson in his life — something that is clear, he often jokes in his speeches, to anyone who has seen his work. He lucked into acting when he was asked to play himself in a 1985 movie "Marie," about a woman he represented in Tennessee who exposed a corruption scandal.

Thompson was so highly regarded as a speaker that he was chosen shortly after his election to the Senate in 1994 to give the Republican response to a nationally televised speech by President Clinton.

During the presidential campaign, his speeches have sometimes been criticized as wandering and uninspired. But some who attend say they come away feeling he is honest and trustworthy.

"He has a natural facility for communicating with average voters," Republican pollster Whit Ayres says.

Policy vision

Fred Thompson has a well-defined political philosophy that has guided his views throughout his career. He believes in limited federal power and leaving many decisions to individual states.

This comes into play in his opposition to federal constitutional amendments or laws banning abortion and gay marriage.

He has throughout his public career been involved in investigations intended to root out wrongdoing in government and politics, from the Watergate hearings to his investigation into the influence of the Chinese government in the 1996 presidential campaign.

"He is a centrist reformer who also has conservative views," scholar Norm Ornstein says of Thompson's political philosophy.

Because of his background as a small-town kid who made his own way, Thompson has an optimistic view of America as a place of unlimited individual opportunity.

He has classic conservative economic positions, believing low taxes and little government interference combined with the free market will solve most problems.

During the campaign, Thompson's focus has been almost entirely on national security. He says the next president's primary job will be to deal with international terrorism. He frames every issue, from education to immigration, in the way it affects national security.

"We need to first and foremost protect our citizens," Thompson said during a speech in Iowa as he began his campaign.

Decision-making style

Fred Thompson makes decisions mostly on his own, with a very small group of confidantes — including his wife, Jeri; campaign manager Bill Lacy; political director Randy Enwright; and his political mentor, former Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker.

While in the Senate, Thompson would delegate routine tasks to his staff, says Tom Daffron, his former chief of staff, but would conduct his own extensive research on the issues that especially sparked his passion.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who worked with Thompson when he chaired the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, says she never saw him unprepared for hearings that often required hours of poring through documents and witness interviews.

"He always had a detailed grasp of the facts and was impressive," Collins says.

Before deciding how to vote on the impeachment of President Clinton, Thompson did his own research on the legal issues involved and the historical precedents. His final decision satisfied no one because he voted for the charge that Clinton obstructed justice but against the charge of perjury for lying to cover up his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.

That is but one example of an occasional departure from his party. He was an ardent supporter, for example, of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform legislation, which many conservatives strongly opposed.

"I believe that Fred was a fearless senator," Collins says. "By that, I mean he was never afraid to cast a vote or take a stand regardless of the political consequence."

Occasionally, however, Thompson has appeared to show an inability to make up his mind — as was the case in the delayed announcement of his presidential bid, which was supposed to be in early summer and finally came in early fall.

Management skills

Fred Thompson never has directly managed anything larger than his Senate staff or the staff of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs when he was chairman, roughly 50 people.

Tom Daffron, Thompson's first chief of staff in the Senate, described Thompson as a delegator who made the policy judgments and let the staff handle the details.

"He didn't get involved in all the nitty-gritty, which I thought was a positive," Daffron says.

"He has a lot more of an executive personality," says scholar Norm Ornstein. He observed Thompson closely during his work on campaign finance reform legislation.

A lot of Thompson's focus while senator was on the mismanagement of government. He published a two-volume report, "Government on the Brink," in 2001 that outlined management problems facing the Bush administration. His investigation found the Defense Department's financial accounting system was in shambles, allowing for billions in waste and no way to properly account for spending. Also, Medicare made $12 billion in improper payments each year, the report said.

Changes in Thompson's campaign staff have caused some to question whether he is too hands-off and not fully in charge.

Early in his campaign, Thomas Collamore was forced out as campaign manager and replaced by Bill Lacy and political director Randy Enwright, who in turn replaced most of the other top staff members. Similar problems have continued and, in early November, key fundraiser Philip Martin resigned from the campaign after revelations of past criminal convictions for drug dealing.