Late last week, I had heard that Fred Thompson’s almost-a-campaign had hired someone to manage their efforts in New Hampshire, and had heard a name, a fellow who ran some local races. I called the Thompson folks, and they said no, not that guy. But they said the position had been filled.

So, despite his problems, and despite some New Hampshire folks getting irked about Mary Matalin’s comments –

MR. RUSSERT: Mary Matalin, on Wednesday night, all the other Republicans will be on a stage debating in New Hampshire. Fred Thompson will be on Jay Leno. Is that appropriate?MS. MATALIN: And guess what? Who do you think has the largest audience at that time? Jay Leno has 31 percent of the audience at the time immediately preceding the video. This is a message-driven campaign, and we want to drive people, and the biggest place to do that was Jay Leno. We want to drive him right at 12:01 to hear Fred Thompson’s principles, which is the definition of performance. I don’t know what they mean by performance. I know what he means by performance. It is getting your principles out there, and we want to drive him right to the video so they don’t have to go through the prism of us. You can read it, and you can see it, and you can hear it and deliver his principles. Thank you, Jay Leno.

– Thompson will be competing in New Hampshire.