Ever have one of those moments where you think of the exact right thing to say, about two minutes after you needed it? That’s a lot what live television is like. In retrospect, “I don’t think Alan Greenspan’s comments about Iraq being a war for oil are going to change many minds about the war in Iraq; I don’t think there are too many Americans who don’t already know what they think about the war” is a lot more compelling argument than what I said on CNN last night, that indeed, it is unlikely that we would be paying as much attention to the Middle East if they had deep reserves of grape jelly. Oh, well.

I felt a little better when discussing the second topic, Fred Thompson’s entrance into the presidential race, and I think the lead-in to the question from CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux – “Fred Thompson jumping into the race and quite late but latest CNN polls really showing he’s doing quite a good job. He’s really neck in neck with Rudy Giuliani at this time” – suggests that Team Fred probably accomplished about three quarters of what they wanted to do with the launch of the campaign. Maybe there was a time in the spring that Thompson could have rode in on a white horse and blown away the rest of the field, but more likely, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney were too well-organized and well-funded to just fall apart. Fred is in, he’s doing well enough in the polls that it’s easy to see him winning the nomination (he doesn’t need some huge burst like, say, Huckabee) and he’s scooping up vast swaths of the conservative base who, for one reason or another, are blah on the other candidates.

I note that Thompson appears at a gun show or gun shop on almost every campaign swing. Rudy just couldn’t do that.