Right Said Fred

At 7:57
p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, while taping "The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno" for broadcast later in the evening, Fred Thompson finally said:
"I'm running for president of the United States."

The studio audience responded with thunderous applause.

Thompson rejected the notion that he has waited too long to get into the race for the White House.

"People treat politicians sort of like the dentist -- they don't have anything to do with them till they have to," he said.

"A lot of people have been, of course, running for some time. Everybody kind of changed the rules.

"Usually you don't announce until after Labor Day, but they started
running a lot earlier, spending millions of dollars and so forth, and
everyone said that you couldn't run this year without raising a hundred
million dollars and starting much earlier. I don't believe that,"
Thompson said, adding that he doubts voters will say: "That guy would
make a very good president, but he didn't get in soon enough."

Leno joked with Thompson about how long he has been "testing the waters," asking: "Are you starting to get a little wrinkly?"

"These wrinkles don't come from the water," Thompson, 65, replied,
to laughter. Referring to a guest announcement Leno made just before
the segment, he joked: "I've been mistaken for Dr. Phil."

The "Law & Order" actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee plans to begin an announcement tour in Iowa on Thursday.

Aides said Thompson will travel in a bus emblazoned with the slogan,
"United in Our Core Beliefs," along with the key themes of "security,"
"unity" and "prosperity."

A key adviser said the two biggest issues motivating Thompson are
"Islamic radicalism and the threat of terrorism reaching our shores,"
and a sense that "politics has broken down in the domestic arena, too."

Thompson plans to announce some politically dicey policies,
including a plan to overhaul a system of entitlements -- Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- that some experts argue is not
financially sustainable.

The former senator joins a field where the candidates, led by Mitt
Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have been scrapping for months. In a decision
that drew complaints from some activists, he skipped Wednesday night's
debate at the University of New Hampshire for the Leno appearance.

Hitting airwaves

Thompson's campaign is running an ad during the debate, being carried by Fox News Channel.

In the spot, the candidate says: "We can't allow ourselves to become
a weaker, less prosperous and more divided nation. Today, as before,
the fate of millions across the world depends on the unity and resolve
of the American people."

The commercial was taped this weekend in the office of Thompson's home in McLean, Va.

Thompson seemed excited about finally launching a race that he said
began "around the kitchen table in late March," telling Leno: "It
starts right here."

The folksy Southerner is supplementing his Leno appearance, and
previewing his Iowa kickoff, with a 15-minute announcement video on his
Web site, www.Fred08.com.

Thompson has not raised money at the clip that some of his early
advisers had suggested he would, but he has come in first or second
place in several state polls.

His campaign, based in Nashville and Northern Virginia, has
undergone several shakeups that have produced bad publicity, but his
backers contend everything until now has been pre-season.

"I think the ship is righting itself," one adviser said in an e-mail.

"If the public responds and he has a good fund-raising month, he's
in business. The staff turmoil is clearly out of the ordinary and
disturbing, but the campaign now has the team it wants, and they'll be
able to work together. We will know soon enough how well the stuff in
front of the curtain plays."

After the Iowa events, he'll head on to New Hampshire, then down to
South Carolina next week and on to Florida. He's also debuting a
30-second ad with a title that says it all: "I'm In."

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Fred Thompson - veteran actor, former Republican senator - is launching his bid for the presidency Hollywood style.

Thompson will make his candidacy official in a 15-minute Webcast set to air at midnight, around the same time that he'll be seen on the East Coast chatting with Jay Leno on a taped broadcast of NBC's "Tonight Show."

He'll call attention to his bid hours earlier with a 30-second ad during the eight-man GOP debate in New Hampshire that he's skipping.

"On the next president's watch, our country will make decisions that will affect our lives and our families far into the future. We can't allow ourselves to become a weaker, less prosperous and more divided nation," Thompson says in the ad that will air on Fox News.

Thompson, 65, enters a crowded GOP field and an extraordinarily fluid race four months before the first votes. While Rudy Giuliani leads in national polls, Mitt Romney maintains an edge in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Overall, Republican voters have expressed less satisfaction with their choices than Democrats, which Thompson sees as an opening for his candidacy.

It won't be easy for the former Tennessee senator. His campaign has been beset by lackluster fundraising and multiple staff changes, the most recent coming on Tuesday with the departure of his spokesman of just two weeks, Jim Mills.

His made-for-television entry - and absence from the GOP debate - didn't go over well with some in New Hampshire.

"There is a genuine interest in Senator Thompson here, a real curiosity about him," New Hampshire Republican Chairman Fergus Cullen said Tuesday. "But that curiosity is giving way to skepticism and maybe even cynicism about him in part because of how he's handling his grand entrance. For him to then go on Jay Leno the same night and be trading jokes while other candidates are having a substantive discussion on issues is not going to be missed by New Hampshire voters."

Thompson starts some eight months after his rivals began their own campaigns and lags behind Giuliani and Romney in both money and organization. In June, Thompson fell short of his $5 million fundraising goal by $1.5 million.

Still, Thompson consistently ranks among the top Republicans in national polls and state surveys. A Southerner with a mostly right-leaning Senate record and a plainspoken style, he is looking to capitalize on discontent with the current choices among conservatives who make up a significant segment of GOP primary voters.

They have not yet settled on a candidate and are searching for someone with like-minded credentials who can win in a general election.

Thompson is perhaps best known to millions of Americans as the gruff district attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's crime drama "Law & Order" and for his roles in more than a dozen movies.

During his 1994-2002 Senate tenure, he was considered a reliably conservative vote. However, he did stray from the party line on a few issues, including advocating for campaign finance reform. He also was John McCain's campaign co-chairman in 2000 instead of backing establishment candidate George W. Bush.

Thompson spent many years in Washington as a lawyer and a lobbyist. He has faced repeated questions about his lobbying work for a family planning group seeking to relax an abortion rule and former leftist Haitian leader Jean Bertrand-Aristide.