Greetings from the Reagan Library on a windy hilltop in Simi Valley, California. Everyone is here, all ten candidates taking part in the Republican debate, plus the small audience that will witness the debate in the museum/hangar that houses Ronald Reagan’s old 707 Air Force One. It’s a slightly odd setup: a row of lecterns facing the rear landing gear of the big plane, with a few rows of seats in between. The actual scene looks quite a bit smaller than the shot you see on television; the audience is very select and it seems safe to say the debate won’t have the feel of an actual campaign event.

There’s a lot of talk about the (non) candidate who is (not) here — Fred Thompson. Obviously, all the spinners and handlers here are representing declared candidates, so they have their own interests. But they make a compelling case that Thompson’s task will grow harder and harder the longer he waits to get into the race. Not only will he be behind all the others in organization, he’ll have had a lot less exposure to the voters. And according this line of thinking, it doesn’t really matter that those voters have seen him on TV — they want to see the man himself. Couple that with the word going around that Thompson might be planning a less-than-full-tilt campaign, relying on his celebrity to allow him to do a little less of the one-on-one campaigning that other candidates are doing, and you’ve got plenty for people from the opposing campaigns to talk about.