Mr. Thompson’s performance at the debate capped a weeklong period in which he held only one retail campaign event: a “meet Fred” rally last Saturday in a small room at the back of Sticky Fingers, a barbecue restaurant in Summerville, S.C. There was no music or food. There were not even chairs, and so some 100 voters there to see him had to stand for three hours before he arrived.

After brief remarks in which he cited the broad conservative principles that he said guided him, he took just a half-dozen questions. The appearance lasted less than 30 minutes, and he left without mingling with customers elsewhere in the restaurant. ~The New York Times

Perhaps this is a calculated gambit on the part of the Thompson campaign.  After all, the more people see of Fred, the less interested they become.  It follows that you should hide the candidate from as many voters as possible, and when you expose him to a few you should make it extremely brief and uninformative.  Perhaps the plan is to keep the voters hungry–literally and figuratively (which explains the lack of food at campaign events).  Fred was never so popular as when he was not officially running, so maybe he is passively trying to reclaim those magic moments of summer when he wasn’t campaigning at all, but was widely beloved by an electorate completely ignorant of who he was.  I think he hopes that his poll numbers will soar as his actual campaigning time approaches zero.  Soon enough, in another bold move, he will eventually drop out of the race in a cunning attempt to win the nomination by unanimous acclamation.