A disturbing conversation with Fred Thompson

Saturday afternoon as I was driving to church, my cell phone rang. It was the Fred Thompson campaign, letting me know that the senator would be doing a meet-and-greet at a cafe in Indianola, a Des Moines suburb not far from where I live, this morning about eleven. Could I make it?

I made it a point to be there. After all, I've been a Thompson supporter since... well, long before the beginning. I wanted to show the colors, as it were, and help out at least by being a friendly face at a public event. Besides, its frustrating seeing all of those Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney bumper stickers without being able to respond in kind. Maybe, I thought, they'll bring a few.

But I also had another motive. As regular readers of this blog will recall, I was quite disturbed by Sen. Thompson's statement a while back that the Federal government should not have gotten involved in the Schaivo affair. The statement contained enough ambiguity, in retrospect, that it wasn't clear whether Thompson was simply stating the common sense principle that, in general, laws governing end-of-life decisions should be made at the state level, or whether he was actually endorsing the active euthanasia legalized by Cruzan v. Director, In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration of food and water is a form of medical treatment, and thus can be legally withheld on the same basis that life-extending medication can be withheld or a respirator turned off. Effectively Cruzan not only blurred but abolished the critical distinction between letting a terminal patient die due to the natural course of his or her illness, and intervening to actively cause the death of a patient who might not be terminally ill in the first place.

Terri Schaivo wasn't. That seemed to me to be a crucial distinction between her case and, for example, the situation Sen. Thompson himself faced when compelled to end-of-life decisions in the tragic case of his own daughter several years ago.

I got to the cafe early, and struck up a conversation with some of the Thompson campaign's advance staff. I idly remarked that FDT hadn't been in his best form when he'd reacted recently to a Fox News reporter's observation that the next president of the United States had a tight schedule by saying, "Yes- and so do I." The remark was widely reported all over the world as an indication that Fred Thompson didn't expect to win. "You can't say things like that!," someone on his national staff reportedly told him afterward."

"Oh, yes," the staffer told me this morning. "He was cracking wise. Fred has quite a sense of humor."

Uh... sure. I didn't say so out loud, but it seemed to me at the very least a matter of his cracking rather unwise. In fact, very unwise.

The folksy, affable candidate actually arrived a few minutes early. Contrary to what I'd been led to expect by the media, he neither rambled nor bored anybody. He talked in rather specific and pointed terms about the need to upgrade our military and intelligence capabilities- which would mean spending more money on such matters, rather than less.

He took us on a quick tour of the Middle East, discussing the implications of the policies of the governments of Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. He warned against been seduced by calls to establish total energy independence in the short term, warning that it simply wasn't going to happen any time soon and opining that our best course is to do the best we can in that direction over the long haul rather than to expect miracles overnight.

Generally, Thompson's presentation was geared to the notion that, whether on social security or energy or health care (for which his prescription was revising the tax structure to reward people for making economically smart health care choices and trusting the market to drive costs down), people were entitled to be told the truth that they might well not want to hear- but which he proposed to tell them anyway.

It was a good performance, and well-received. But I had my question to ask the senator about Cruzan and the attendent issues. I wasn't called upon in the brief question-and-answer period, so i made it a point to be in his path as he worked his way toward the door.

"Senator," I said, as I shook his hand, "I have a quick question, if I might."

To his credit, he immediately stopped and gave me his undivided attention.

"It concerns your remark concerning the roll of the Federal government in cases in which people who can't speak for themselves are ordered starved to death on hearsay evidence given by the people who have the most to gain from their deaths."

"The Schaivo case," he immediately responded.

"Sure," I said. "I can understand your wanting state law to govern end of life issues as a rule. And I know that you, as a father, had to face some tough decisions of that kind yourself a few years ago. But my question is whether there isn't a Federal issue- namely, the sick person's rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution- that might justify a Federal role."

"Do you think Federal courts would do a better job of protecting the rights of such people than local courts?," he rhetorically asked me.

"Well, the problem is that in such cases, those representing the people who want life terminated in the initial trial- the trial that determines fact, and as a practical matter the only one that actually considers questions of fact- are quite often well-paid specialists in such cases, and the people on the other side are often ordinary lawyers who just aren't in a position to give an equivalent level of advocacy."

"Really?" he said, his eyebrows arching. "You think all specialists favor the side that wants to terminate support?"

"That's not what I said, Senator," I replied. "I said that the people who represent that side are nearly always specialists. Doesn't that raise a question of these people being deprived of life without due process of law?

"Of course they receive due process," Senator Thompson replied. "In the state and local courts.

"Listen," he continued. "You can't possibly know on the basis of reading about a case in the newspapers as much as a family's doctor and mom and dad know. They know how much pain the person is suffering. They know the prognosis. They know a lot more than you can possibly know by reading about the case in a newspaper."

All of which, of course, was perfectly true. It just wasn't relevant to my question.

So I tried again. "Sure," I said. "I recognize all of those things. But that's not what I'm asking about. I'm asking about Cruzan v. Director. I'm asking about treating food and water as the equivalent of medical treatment."

He then essentially repeated what he'd said before. To his credit, he was clearly becoming a little emotional- not surprisingly, of course. He reminded me that he'd been the dad of a person in that situation, and that while there was no disagreement in his family, these were matters best left to the family. He added that he would not have his committment to life questioned, either concerning issues at life's beginning, or at its end.

"I'm not questioning your committment to life, Senator," I replied. "Well, alright then," he said- and headed on toward the door.

And I really wasn't. What I questioned- and now question even more- was whether he understands the implications of his own position for the respect with which we treat human life.

I was standing next to an Australian reporter, who- along with a reporter from the AP- had been taking down our whole conversation. "He didn't answer my question," I told the Aussie lady. "He didn't answer mine, either," she replied.

I didn't hear what she had asked him.

My question- which I guess maybe I could have put more clearly- was finally whether Senator Thompson really didn't see a difference between letting a dying person die of natural causes, possibly by withholding actual medical care, and making a person who is not dying of natural causes die unnaturally by staring him or her to death. But as happens all too often in such disagreements, we were holding two different conversations. It strikes me- again, to Fred Thompson's credit- that he responded genuinely and from the heart, as a grieving father whose own pain perhaps blinds him to a huge ethical distinction which, after all, did not arise in the case of his daughter. But it still causes me to wonder whether, in conscience, I can continue to treat Sen. Thompson- rather than, say, Mike Huckabee or even Mitt Romney- as my first choice for the 2008 nomination. They, after all, understand the distinction between allowing nature to take its course and actual euthanasia- between decisions such as the Thompson family may have faced, and what Dr. Kevorkian was put in jail for.

I have no doubt that I could happily and easily support Fred Thompson if he were to be the nominee. And I continue to like and admire the man, whose public career I've followed ever since he was in the Senate. I'm feeling very conflicted right now, and I'm going to have to think this over.

I'm more convinced than ever, after having my talk with him this morning, that Fred Thompson is a good man. The question is whether I might not be more comfortable, here at a stage in which there are viable alternatives, supporting a candidate who sees the truly vital ethical distinction which Fred Thompson apparently does not.