So says Fred Thompson, responding to James Dobson's latest attacks with what have to be the most refreshing words in the presidential campaign so far.

Glenn Reynolds watched the interview and later linked Ian Schwartz's video, which is now on YouTube:

With all due respect, screw James Dobson and his repeated screwball attacks.

And screw John Dean with his repeated slimeball attacks against Thompson. While the fact that John Dean has gone out of his way to attack Thompson is considered less newsworthy, Dean's animosity to Thompson goes back further than Dobson's -- all the way back to Watergate, when Thompson, as Republican minority counsel, got a little too close (IMO) to the truth about Dean's personal involvement with Watergate. Vintage video here. Ironically, Dean -- and others -- are now trying to spin Thompson as "dumb" (to the point of relying on Richard Nixon as judge!)

Interestingly, even some of Thompson's critics admit that his honesty was refreshing then, and it's refreshing now. What Thompson did not know, no one knew -- until the story of the actual Watergate burglary began to unravel. It's a long story and I've posted about it a number of times. This post is not the place to go through it again, but -- if you want to understand how close Thompson was to figuring out Dean's role in the burglary, watch this excerpt from Tom Clancy's "Eye of the Storm" video.

(And while I don't write this blog for political junkies, if there are any and they're interested and have time to watch videos, by all means help yourself to the YouTube links I posted here.)

If you watch the Clancy/Ehrlichman video above, you'll notice that Dean (who was White House counsel) admits that he concealed the involvement of Gordon Strachan -- and thus the White House -- from the White House. (If you think about it, it should become apparent that the only reason Dean would do this would have been to prevent the Machiavellian Nixon, always baffled by the actual burglary itself, from learning about Dean's own involvement.) The "Strachan zone" was precisely the area to which Thompson was getting so damnably close in his questioning at the hearing in the Times video above. The problem was that by the time of the hearings, the burglary was a done deal, the burglars were in the joint, and no one was interested in what had happened or why. All that mattered was the coverup. And the fact is, Nixon ordered the coverup, even if he didn't understand what it was he was covering up.

Thompson was right there in the middle of it, trying to be conscientious, and yet he had no idea how close he was. Little wonder John Dean hates him.

But I digress. (I admit, I'm fascinated by Watergate's unresolved questions.)

The important thing to remember is that Thompson is under attack by both James Dobson and John Dean.

In my view, that alone makes him a great guy.

But beyond that, Thompson keeps talking about the Constitution -- and federalism -- in a way which makes me think that he really believes in such things, and not just as campaign rhetoric. It may be that the only way to pull together the horribly fractured Republican Party is to go back to what too many Republicans (and too many politicians) have ignored. Some things are worth taking seriously, and the Constitution is one of them. I don't know when I last saw a presidential candidate talk the way I've seen Thompson talk, and I am cautiously optimistic.

Nearly everyone called Watergate a "constitutional crisis" at the time, and Thompson was in the middle of it. (Peter Morgan and Glenn Reynolds called Watergate the "Big Bang," which is true. We live in the post-Watergate era, in which political/moral thinking is referenced from the Watergate starting point.)

Anyway, I'm a pretty cynical person, but the more I see of Thompson, the more I think this might explain the genuine respect he seems to have for the Constitution (which most politicians regard as a quaint anachronism, if not an annoying irrelevancy).

A crisis can do that.