Thompson, serving as minority counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee.   (Photo: JP Laffont/Sygma/Corbis)

Thompson glanced around at the 4,000 guns, and strode toward an employee. “I’ve been looking into your record, and I’m really looking forward to you getting into the race,” said Robert Brown, a 34-year-old salesman. Thompson beamed, pumped his hand, and told him, “We need to get back to basics.”

Fred and Jeri then made a loop of the store, pausing before a glass display case that could be used to showcase engagement rings. Here at Riley’s, it housed a dozen glimmering Saturday night specials. Thompson lovingly nudged his spouse and tilted his noggin toward a coal-black .38 Smith & Wesson and cooed, “Honey, would you like one of those?”

On the way out, I tried again to get Thompson to veer off-script. I jokingly asked him if he had more experience hunting than does Romney, who had been lampooned for saying he hunted varmints. As in a bad movie, time stopped for a second as I realized I’d just set foot on a land mine of my own laying. Jeri beamed, and Fred halted his walk back to the car. He shot a look at the camera crews—Fox had sent two—and waited a second for everyone to settle in again. This is why they made the visit: It was time to contrast the man’s man Thompson with his effete competitors.

“I’ve got a little different eating habits,” joked Thompson. “I’ve hunted pheasants, and I like to skeet shoot. We’d hold a celebrity skeet-shooting contest in Washington, raise money for juvenile diabetes. Now, I’ve held it, I’ve never won it. They couldn’t slow those things down enough for me.”

The Fox crew nodded appreciatively. A moment later, the SUVs peeled away. The whole stop lasted far shorter than an episode of Law & Order, and was just as well-directed.

Thompson changed his mind about the Senate in 1993, when Al Gore was elected vice-president and his seat became open. Thompson’s opponent was Congressman Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat and the son of a former governor. At first, the candidates projected similar images of dark-suited blandness. “I remember an early event at the Peabody hotel in Memphis,” says Mike Kopp, Cooper’s press secretary. “Cooper was a black hole of charisma: He didn’t have any, and he’d suck up yours. But Fred didn’t come across as exactly electric.”

In May 1994, Thompson trailed badly and talked of quitting. Frustrated, he called Knoxville political consultant Tom Ingram, who had masterminded Lamar Alexander’s 1978 election as Tennessee governor. Alexander wasn’t Mr. Personality either, but he caught fire when Ingram put him in a plaid shirt and had him walk across the state (a tactic, it’s worth noting, that later bombed when Alexander ran for president). Thompson and Ingram met at a Cracker Barrel restaurant halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. “He was talking of getting out, and I asked him how’d he want to do this,” remembers Ingram. “Fred said, ‘Just driving around talking to people.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s get you a truck and do it.’”

Although some of his campaign staff protested the move as cheesy, they leased Thompson a red Chevy pickup and he hit the road. Cooper attempted to paint Thompson as phony, calling him a “Gucci-wearing, Lincoln-driving, Perrier-drinking, Grey Poupon–spreading millionaire Washington special-interest lobbyist.” But voters loved the truck. They didn’t seem to mind that the candidate often switched from a sedan to the truck just miles from his appearances. “We couldn’t believe anyone was buying it,” says Kopp. “We underestimated him. What we didn’t get is that Fred is the country version of a street kid. He’s been talking his way out of situations since he was in high school. He’s a charmer. People fall for it.”

Kopp and Ingram are friends, and Kopp expresses admiration for the consultant’s work. “Fred Thompson was miscast at the beginning of the race,” Kopp says. “So Tom just recast the role, and Fred Thompson played it perfectly.”

Ingram disagrees. “The reason the truck worked is that that is Fred Thompson. Gimmicks fail in campaigns all the time because they don’t ring true. Yeah, Fred is a lawyer and an actor, but he is also a country guy. People sense that.”

Thompson ended up winning by twenty points, partially aided by the Gingrich sweep of 1994. He drove the red truck to Washington where his old boss Baker threw a raucous party for him. According to The Washington Monthly, a gleeful Thompson mentioned that the craziness made him think of the party his fellow Tennessean Andrew Jackson had at the White House on the night of his inauguration.

“One office at a time,” cautioned Baker.