An irony of former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson’s now-defunct bid for the Republican presidential nomination is that it fell victim to packaging, both that practiced by rival campaigns and that not practiced by his own campaign.

The phlegmatic Thompson was, prior to his entry into the Republican field late last year, cast by some Republicans as Ronald Reagan redux, a man with conservative views, the communication skills of a seasoned actor, and improbably, a sunny disposition. It turned out that, at least on the latter two counts, both rank and file and professional Republicans succumbed to wishful thinking. Looking for an affable conservative to rally the old Reagan coalition for victory in 2008, they instead found in Thompson a sort of a wizened Southerner on sedatives.

Thompson’s stint as an actor, sandwiched between his incarnations as lawyer, Senate Watergate Committee counsel, and Senator, found him playing curmudgeonly characters rather than the sorts of parts that Reagan had played in a string of mostly B-movies, mostly All-American, “Aw shucks” guys. Neither Reagan nor Thompson had to do much acting in their screen appearances. Each played parts close to their real personalities or, at least, close to the people they wanted to be.

Like Reagan, Thompson is a genuine conservative. Yet, once he entered the race, disappointing scores of people who wanted to support him by failing to deliver the kinds of “Morning in America” rhetoric associated with Reagan even when he was pounding his opposition, Thompson’s conservative credentials didn’t seem to matter.

The man who has spent so many years in an industry known for PR-packaging of acting talent, saw the erosion of his once-prohibitive lead in polls of likely Republican voters plummet while Rudy Giuliani, a liberal out of step with his own party on most issues and Mitt Romney, a man with no discernibly long-held political principles or beliefs, packaged themselves as conservatives. Millions passed on the real conservative Thompson while buying the faux-conservatism of first, Giuliani, who will be forced to leave the race if he loses the Florida primary next week, and then, Romney, currently second in the GOP race.

One of my theories about leadership, an art that I’ve studied since I was a boy and which I’ve practiced for more than thirty years, is that it only belongs to those who persuade us to “buy into” them.

Buying into a leader involves a complicated and situationally-influenced combination of trust and likability. In 1960, for example, a slim majority of US voters bought into John Kennedy because his brand of youthful energy was compelling for a generation of Americans grown tired of the grandfatherly visage of Dwight Eisenhower. But, irrespective of whatever abilities or virtues Kennedy possessed as a leader, much of his ascendance was a triumph of packaging over reality. The forty-three year old Kennedy, a victim of various afflictions, was probably in poorer health than Eisenhower, even though the seventy-year old former general had suffered from a heart attack and a stroke during his time in the White House.

Whether Fred Thompson could have ever been packaged as a likable guy is anybody’s guess. And likability on the stump often bears little relationship to personal likability. If it were, then both Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, and Al Gore, the 2000 Democratic nominee, both of whom love to joke and yuck it up in private, would have won their respective races.

Left as serious contenders in the race for the GOP nomination are Senator John McCain, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Huckabee, even with his populist—some would say, implausible—economic views, disdained by Thompson, nonetheless authentically expresses the views of one strain of conservative thought, that of the Religious Right. And McCain, in spite of his views on immigration and campaign spending reform, is otherwise an orthodox conservative, out of step with current neoconservative views in some cases, but an authentic conservative.

That Romney remains in the race, seen by some as the conservative candidate, is another triumphing of packaging over reality. It may just win him the nomination of the GOP.

But if I were a counselor to any of these contenders, I would advise them to take the risk of being themselves. It may cost them the nomination or the election. But when sitting presidents are seen, finally, to be inauthentic automatons driven only by polls and the desire to maintain power for power’s sake, it can have a devastating impact on people’s buy-in of their leadership.

Fred Thompson won’t become president. But I suspect that he’s one curmudgeon who can look at himself in the mirror and have less reason to be ashamed than many of us have.