A) March 11, 2007   B)  April 11, 2007   C)  May 11, 2007 

The answer is A, March 11, 2007, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.  

We are now under two weeks away from the six month anniversary of Thompson’s announcement he was considering getting into the race, and here’s what’s transpired at Team Thompson. 

• April 4 – Fred gives a speech in conservative hotbed of Orange County, California to the Lincoln Club.  Speech is fine on substance, but he gives a lackluster delivery. 
• April 11 –  Fred announced on Fox News to Neil Cavuto he has non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. 
• May 09 - Talk is now about Fred 2.0, trying to improve on public speaking skill demonstrated at Lincoln Club the week before.  
• May 21 – Fred dissolves his Senatorial PAC and hires former George H.W. Bush staffer Tom Collamore as campaign manager of the campaign that doesn’t exist yet. 
• May 30 – Inside sources tell Politico’s Mike Allen that Fred will officially jump into the race over July 4^th weekend.  
• June 01 – Fred announces exploratory “testing the waters” committee. 
• June 03 – Fred gives speech to Virginia GOP in Richmond.  Former Dick Cheney staffer Mary Matalin announces she’s joining the campaign that doesn’t exist yet. 
• June 13 – Fred appears on Tonight Show and tells Jay Leno while he’s never craved the office of president, there are things he wants to do that can only be done as president. 
• June 27 – Fred tells crowd at GOP luncheon in South Carolina, “We'll be talking about that later, not today, but not too long.” 
• July 11 – Carl Cameron reports on Fox News that his sources say an August announcement by Thompson saying he’s running is likely. Mike Allen of Politico gets a more cryptic answer from a Thompson staffer – “When FDT is ready to announce.” 
• July 15 – Fred adds staff to communications and a political director. 
• July 17 – Rumors are that Fred definitely won’t announce anything official in July. 
• July 24 – After 65 days on the job, Tom Collamore is out as the campaign manager of the camapaign that doesn’t exist yet.  Randy Enwright would take over.
• July 25 – J.T. Mastranadi quits as head of research for the campaign that doesn’t exist, citing lack of structure. 
• July 27 – Fred appears on Hannity & Colmes, and says a final decision on whether he’s running or not will be made soon, 139 days after he first hinted to Chris Wallace he was considering the run for the presidency.  Team Thompson also loses Tom Frechette, formerly the deputy under Tom Collamore as campaign manger of the campaign that doesn’t exist. 
• August 07 – Fred website 2.0 launches. 
• August 08 – Bill Lacy takes the reins as campaign manager for the campaign that still doesn’t exist. Rumors of a post-Labor Day announcement surfaces as Fred prepares for first arrival in Iowa. 
• August 20 – Burson Snyder resigns as spokeswoman, citing a desire to find a better professional fit. 
• August 27 – Communications director Linda Rozett is fired. Rozett is understood to be the reason why Burson Snyder resigned just a week earlier.   
• August 30 – Todd Harris is hired to replace Linda Rozett in communications. Team Thompson makes announcement that Fred will make official announcement on September 6^th, by way of webcast.  If Senator Thompson keeps this date, it will be exactly 180 days after he first publicly hinted he was thinking about it.   

There are many downsides to having a presidential campaign begin in earnest this far out in front of Election Day, as it has in this cycle.  Voter fatigue is surely going to occur along the way. But if there is one positive note about such a long campaign cycle, it’s to see how effective each candidate is at managing their campaigns.  Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have run the best campaigns thus far on the Republican side, and you have to give Hillary Rodham Clinton credit. Her campaign is literally a machine that should be studied and emulated for generations to come.  Fred Thompson, however, does present the Republican voter concerns over such a turbulent summer with key officials in an under-the-radar campaign coming and going, many of them citing lack of structure as the reason for their departure.  That doesn’t exactly imbue the average voter with confidence that a Thompson administration will hit the ground running in 2009, especially during wartime. 

Another aspect of a long campaign cycle is you get to see more opportunities to see how candidates make decisions.  And here, Republican voters can judge all of the leading contenders, but again, the one person that sticks out the most for analysis is Fred Thompson.  Perhaps the most important decision a presidential has to make is the most obvious one – the decision to enter the race. And while many Beltway pundits will debate the strategy that Thompson has employed thus far to time the entry into the race, trying to raise money below the radar, capitalizing on the television celebrity without having to discuss issues in a debate format, giving opponents ammunition, the perception of the average voter, after six months of hearing that Thompson is getting in the race, is he begins to sound like the boy who cried wolf. When he finally does announce, if he does, there is not going to be the initial excitement and bump in the polls that a candidate usually hopes for.   

Fred Thompson was an able Senator, a solid conservative, by all accounts a good guy, but his decision-making skills are questionable at best.  If a crisis occurs during a Thompson administration, one would expect him to be able to make instant decisions and stick by them, not kick the can down the road until you put together a support team you’re finally comfortable with in order to formally announce six months later that you’re ready to finally make your official announcement a week and a half later.  The world doesn’t work that way anymore.  Being president in the 21^st Century requires real time assessment, and real time decisions being made.  Unfortunately, Fred Thompson has not shown he has this skill set.  He might possess it, but he’s done a lousy job so far of showing it.