Word: thompson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...used-car dealer from Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, Thompson earned his way through Memphis State and Vanderbilt Law School selling shoes door to door and working in a bicycle factory. He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Tennessee when Baker recruited him for the Watergate Committee...
...Thompson has been guarded of late in his comments about the Administration. But in an interview a few days before the election, he pronounced himself "mightily, mightily disgusted" with revelations of Democratic fund-raising irregularities, which he said made Nixon's tactic of shaking down corporate contributions seem "pretty paltry in comparison." For Clinton to try to deflect the controversy by recommitting himself to a bill--co-sponsored by Thompson--that would ban many of the President's own campaign practices "shows breathtaking audacity," the Senator added...
Even before he came to the Senate, Thompson had little patience for chasing the money it takes to get elected. Bouncing along dark Tennessee roads from one fund raiser to the next, he would give his campaign manager, Bill Lacy, long disquisitions on the flaws of the current system. An underdog against a better-financed Democrat, Thompson was finally exasperated enough by conventional campaigning to don battered boots and lease a red pickup to travel the state talking about how "Ol' Fred" would bring common sense to Washington. Voters loved the whole bit, even when it came from a rich...
Washington has been similarly enthralled. The week he became a Senator, Thompson was selected to give the G.O.P. response to Clinton's televised announcement of the tax-cut plan he had cobbled together in the wake of the devastating 1994 election. Thompson delivered it sitting casually atop a desk, and it lasted only five minutes. But it was enough to produce the drooling headline a star is born on Frank Rich's column in the New York Times...
Having promised to serve no more than two terms in the Senate, Thompson has shown little regard for its clubby folkways. He quickly signed on to his friend John McCain's campaign-finance-reform bill and began battling for such internally unpopular measures as term limits. Two years in a row, he has killed otherwise automatic congressional pay raises by demanding they be voted on separately...