Professor Reynolds and the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Cooper (free link, so no lecture on the need to subscribe today) are asking how long Fred Thompson can wait before entering the presidential race and still have a shot. Cooper identifies the financial pitfalls of Thompson’s dithering and thinks his “delay is costly.” Glenn thinks that Fred! has plenty of time, suspecting that in this, the era of Al Gore’s internet, “you can go from zero to sixty faster than in the past.”

Not that anyone asked my opinion, but I agree with Glenn. I’ll even go one step further – even in the pre-internet dark ages, it was possible to go from “zero to sixty” pretty darn quickly.

In 1992, Ross Perot threw his strait-jacket into the general election ring and quickly ascended, albeit momentarily, to the top of the polls. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, the initial version of Perot presented the American public with a combination of audacity, insanity and stupidity that a lot of people found simply irresistible. (It pains me to recall that members of my own family thought his idea of holding national plebiscites to create laws on really important things was a revolutionary stroke of brilliance.) It’s important to note that Perot was besting Clinton and Bush 41 before he had spent any of his billions on the campaign. Free media triggered his ascent.

The far more relevant matter is that Perot, surely inadvertently, timed his entrance perfectly. He jumped into the race at a moment when the American public was profoundly dissatisfied with its presidential options. It’s not hard to imagine the same thing happening with Thompson this time around. If a loon like Perot could hit the top of the charts because the public didn’t like the existing field, imagine what a solid and skilled candidate like Thompson could accomplish.

I HAPPEN TO THINK that the Republican top tier is an impressive group. Everyone knows I’m a Romney guy, and I would enthusiastically support Giuliani if he got the nomination.

But as Rudy pointed out last week, this is the first primary season held with the blogosphere in full flight, treating each and every news cycle as do-or-die. It’s apparent that all of the candidates will have an untold amount of stumbles between now and Iowa. Just last week, all the members of the Republican top tier made unforced errors.

It’s not only conceivable, but perhaps quite likely, that the Republican electorate will become extremely dissatisfied with its slate of candidates over the next several months. Judging by my Inbox, a lot of people already feel that way. If the dissatisfaction increases, the guy riding in on a white steed to save the day and who hasn’t spent the past year embarrassing himself on the trail might look pretty damn attractive.

So, how much time does Fred have to enter the race? Plenty.

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