He got a late start in his 2004 race against Daschle, and it worked. And Thune points to Fred Thompson as someone who delayed his entry in 2008 but was nonetheless competitive. “Fred had an opportunity there and he waited until considerably later in the game.” ~Stephen Hayes

It may tell you something about this remarkably long profile of John Thune that there was nothing in it until the eighth page that related anything interesting about Thune’s possible political future. Thune’s name keeps coming up whenever the subject turns to the presidential race in 2012, but it can’t be encouraging to Thune fans that he believes Fred Thompson was a competitive candidate in 2008. It wasn’t just that Thompson entered the race late, which certainly didn’t help, but like Thune he had no particular theme or reason for running. It was as if he felt obliged to provide the Fred Thompson alternative, which turned out to be a dull echo rather than an alternative. From his rambling, 17-minute (as I recall) campaign announcement released online to his fairly early departure from the field after South Carolina, Thompson distinguished himself mainly by his refusal to raise his hand during a debate and an embarrassing habit of falsely claiming that no other nation has lost as many soldiers in the cause of freedom as the U.S. For the most part, he seemed to think his job was to heckle Mike Huckabee during the debates in late 2007. He had virtually no impact on the 2008 field, except to split the conservative vote in South Carolina enough to give McCain an important win, and never received more than 16% of the vote in any state he seriously contested. Third-place also-rans are not normally considered to have been competitive presidential candidates.

On TARP, Thune is disingenuous when he objects to the TARP being misused when the legislation he voted for provided no oversight or accountability for how the money would be used. His vote and the votes of his colleagues all but guaranteed that the money would be used for whatever purpose the executive wanted, and that’s exactly what happened. He is probably right that it won’t be held against him, because it would end up disqualifying almost every leading national Republican.

On the more grave matter of starting a war with Iran, Thune takes the predictable, reckless hawkish line:

“A nuclear Iran is a very, very serious threat to America’s interests and to America,” Thune said. “And I think the president assumed that when he came into office that all that stuff would just go away because all’s he’s got to do is he could be the great negotiator and people would just sit down and reason, and I think he’s found out otherwise.” Thune says the United States should exhaust all options before turning to a military action. But given a choice between a risky military strike and an Iran with nuclear capability, it’s not a close call.

“There are no good options, but I think the United States has to have on the table the military option. And I think if there is a possibility that we could destroy or take out that nuclear capability by acting sooner rather than later I think it’d be better to act sooner.”

Thune may run a pointless Thompsonesque campaign, or he may run a good one, but as far as I’m concerned this position on Iran proves that he should never be allowed near the Presidency.