by Paul Jacob

There are about a dozen candidates in each party I don't want to see as president. So I guess that limits the possibilities.

We could do worse than former Senator Fred Thompson. Look where he is on the one-to-ten scale of narcissistic egomania. Whereas most political aspirants for the presidency typically rate a nine or ten, Thompson is closer to zero.

For one thing, he likes term limits. He tells the American Spectator that he still believes in them, as he did when he entered the Senate in 1995. He says, "[S]ome people . . . came to Washington to drain the swamp and then stayed longer than they should have and became alligators. . . . I think the professionalization of our political class has a tendency to create people who worry more about their careers and honors than what the voters sent them to Washington to do."

Thompson has rebuffed a proposal of the Tennessee legislature to name a highway after him. He says "I didn't build it and I didn't pay for it. The taxpayers did." Has Thompson learned nothing from serving with Senator Robert Byrd, after whom every taxpayer-funded block of stone and tarmac in West Virginia is especially named? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says Thompson is too "normal." Not enough of a megalomaniac. But Thompson's distaste for power-mad politics is what I like best about him.

I'll take healthy and normal any day.

Paul Jacob's "Common Sense" is published by the Sam Adams Alliance. Their website can be visited at www.samadamsalliance.org.