I have a new story up on Fred Thompson’s campaign finale here in South Carolina. The short version is: Thompson, the man who in the conventional wisdom has come to define low-energy campaigning, was absolutely riveting. He was engaged and impassioned and devoted his entire talk to conservative first principles. In turn, the audience was enormously enthusiastic. Which of course led to the inevitable observation, made by a woman standing next to me near the podium, “Where was this six months ago?”

After Thompson’s speech, I hurried from Greenville back to Columbia to catch Mike Huckabee’s last campaign event, at the University of South Carolina campus. It was a truly low-energy affair, with a three-quarters-filled room and a really bad band. The highlight of the night was the live appearance of the two guys who have reworked a bunch of classic-rock hits into Huckabee campaign songs and gotten a zillion hits on YouTube: “Here’s to you, Mister Huckabee, Jesus loves you more than will know. Whoa, whoa, whoa. God bless you please, Mister Huckabee, the White House holds a place for those who pray. Hey, hey, hey.”

In contrast to Thompson’s first principles, Huckabee gave his populist, I-care-about-the-little-guy appeal, well delivered – as always – but not really connecting with the college crowd. At one point, he actually used the phrase, most associated with Bill Clinton, that people are in “a world of hurt.” By the end, the strongest impression the event left was that the people on stage were a really motley crew, led by professional wrestling star Ric Flair, who has endorsed Huckabee and has been traveling around South Carolina with him. When Huckabee said that he was going to make Flair head of Homeland Security – a joke he usually uses with Chuck Norris – my wife, who has come along for this trip and is no fan of Huckabee’s, leaned over to me and said, “Why not?”