Doesn't Thompson raise certain problems too?

Matt Yglesias has a post talking about Fred Thompson's prospects in '08:

[T]he generic conservative Republican the GOP wants to nominate is a generic conservative Republican governor ... It is absolutely, vitally crucial to the Republican Party's electoral prospects to obscure its basic slash-and-burn mentality, and that means people with a Gingrich-era voting record are no good. ... Thompson managed to be in the Senate for decent stretch of time without developing any signature issues or anything -- there's nothing to define him but his voting record.

To be sure, when the cheetah starts offering the gazelle restaurant reccomendations, you have to question the motivation, but there's a grain of truth here, which is that the conventional wisdom holds that you want to nominate someone with executive experience to be President. Certainly I tend to agree with that, and my impression is that Republicans have been big on this conventional wisdom in the last couple of years, bolstered by the instrumental value of that argument in this time when most of the pool of Democratic Presidential hopefuls are Senators (Clinton, Obama, Biden, etc.), which makes it a handy weapon against the other side (and, of course, against McCain). It seems to me that this is an argument that we've been on the right side of, historically - but Yglesias does raise the unfortunate point that it at least mutes the force of a weapon we've wielded to good effect before.

Ideally, if course, you want a governor, but the mayor of New York is sui generis, which pole-vaults Giuliani into the running, and I suppose Newt is sui generis in and of himself. So where does Thompson fit into this? I suppose there's a certain appeal about having a non-politician candidate, which as I read it is the card Deval Patrick played up in Massachusetts to some effect. But as Yglesias points out, Thompson isn't exactly a non-politician at all: like any Senator, he has been for many things before he was against them. Such is the nature of being in the Senate - it's a rich seam to mine. There's certainly an argument for having a non-politician candidate, but is there an argument for having a sort-of sort-of-not non-politician candidate?

Ultimately, I think the main thing going for Thompson is that he's seen as a conservative who can win, just as the main thing going for Guiliani is that he's seen as a strong leader who can win. Certainly the base would be a lot more comfortable with Thompson, but he does seem to have a few problems, and I'mnot convinced that at bottom, he's got a better shot at the White House than does Guiliani. I'm certainly not opposed to Thompson, and I guess I'd certainly put him in the pool with Newt and Michael Steele of great potential veeps, but as a top of ticket contender it just gives me an niggling, ineffable feeling of settling.

Related:
Fred Dalton Thompson weighs his options
Rudy on Judges III
Why 270 is the magic number and Ohio is the magic word
More on '08: Newt talks to Fortune, NRO talks up Rudy
Just a thought