There are some things that lucre cannot buy. Fire in the Belly: You can’t have it because you want it. You can’t have it because it seems like a good idea. You can’t have it because people think you’re swell. You can’t have it because you are talented, have good ideas, are well-positioned. You can’t build it by caucus-winning, water it with money, nor cut-and-paste it from one past presidential person to the next.

Fire in the Belly is not about having a Career. Fire in the Belly is about having and heeding a Calling. Career and Calling are not the same thing. The former is a pragmatic function, the latter at its best, is the terrain of the precious charism one brought to Earth to spend richly on others.

Fire in the Belly comes from hearing a voice greater that calls one to act in as much goodness as one can muster or finagle, to brave on, no matter what, even no matter what the episodic outcomes, nil or garner.

I’ve been an analyst of human behavior for 38 years and come from a long ethnic line of keepers of the old stories. Even in our current wonder-world times, the ancient stories about human behavior still hold. I find insights there that can still predict human frailties and strengths. I study in the main, the shenanigans and shamings, the failures and triumphs of heroes… and heroines.

Heroic Stances In Candidates Are Not Enough
And surely any soul who takes up their bindle bag, their at least half-shiny sword and their leathern armor to compete to be a Leader of our Land, qualifies in some way, as heroic.

But Fire in the Belly, is another applesauce altogether.

Fire in the Belly is the mark of not just any warrior, but the aegis of the superior warrior… that instinctive, well-informed drive that when called to the surface, pushes a soul to be and bring good and right, not just personal might, to the world.

The Conscious Hero/ Heroine…and the Detrimental Unconscious Would-Be Hero
In mythos, efforts to bring Good and Right are the marks of a hero/ heroine with consciousness. But, efforts to bring only displays of Personal Might, are considered the mark of an unconscious and inferior hero/ heroine… one who longs to wear the august armor, but is as yet, too self interested to fill out that armor with anything other than empty words

… as in a tale told in our family of Pentdura, a would-be finagler whose words eerily echo through his armor making him think he is being spoken to by the Gods, when in fact he is only hearing himself talk to himself using ever more grandiose appellations.

A true Fire in the Belly pushes a wise person to not give in or give up, to keep going regardless of feast or famine. Regardless of foibles and mis-steps—of which heroes and heroines have many— Fire in the Belly is evidenced often by the hero and heroine continuing over rough terrain, through ambushes, falling over their own errors, but arighting themselves, keeping going, to keep on as though one is following the huge lit candle in the dark, like the one that once streamed over the stormy seas from the Lighthouse at Alexandria.

That kind of follow-through, that carrying forward, that course which requires strategy and cleverness, re-evaluation and heart, rising above one’s own foibles, and bending low to touch the untouchables… those are some of the evidences of Fire in the Belly.

Whomsoever says a heroic person with Fire in the Belly always knows the exact right way the first time, knows nothing about the growing of a venerable and formidable leader.

It isn’t omniscience that makes one warrior outlast the other contenders.

As in Nature, it is the one who carries the ‘won’t be deterred’ intention. Also, as in Nature, it is the one who carries the ability to make wise adaptations to move forward as more data is received, as more untoward and unusual experiences are met. Those are the warriors, in mythos, in Nature, and in reality, who last the race to the finish.

Fire in the Belly is an interior ignition –in human proportions—of a ‘something,’ an invisible ‘It,’ an even and deeply burning flame seemingly taken from a larger Light. In mythos, no hero or heroine is able to explain the source of their extreme ‘jing’ to keep going, their intense, and some who are sleepier might say, ‘excessive’ drive to bring balance to a darkened, out of order, or defeated world.

Those heroes and heroines who cannot stay the course through the storms and attacks, the brushes with sudden death, the facings of evil, who do not know how to soldier on when ‘the get’ that day is more feathers than feast… who do not want to, or who have other human considerations that mean more to them than ‘the long march’ ahead … this is understandable, for in mythos, many who are stalwart turn back too.

Turning back for many, according to their own wisdom may be good, for as they say, rather than burning in ultimate defeat, one lives to fight a different fight, hopefully a meaningful one, another day.

And so it may be for Fred Thompson. It appears good will has been present in his choices in the current election race. But a couple weeks ago, when asked what was his most prized possession, he said “My trophy wife.” I have liked what I’ve heard from his wife Jeri; she is both smart and vigilant. But Thompson’s ‘trophy wife’ comments seemed overused to many.

And though this reprise remark, was Roy Blount-ish, down-home humor, it also squandered an opportunity. The crabby old grand crones of my family would likely say, “The race is for the Presidential nomination, not for the Will Rogers humor award.”

Fire in the Belly would have said something far different in response to that question, something that was living fire with intent… instead of laconic fi-fi with none.

This one small example out of many which appeared to show Mr. Thompson’s ‘off the cuff’ manner, an unevenness in forethought, strategic planning, leaderly response is not the central reason for his “start that never really got started.” It was only one more small marker.

There are larger ones: the public’s perception that his late start looked haphazard rather than planned; lack of hard-hitting publicity given that Mr. Thompson has myriad television connections; and what some saw as a too vague platform sometimes filled with speech-writers’ thoughts more than Mr. Thompson displaying his own considerable record.

To too many, this seemed to say, ‘not enough serious and definitive planning, not enough fire to finish this long, long race.’

Offhand remarks have sunk many a politico, and I feel for them, for it is easy in the savor and excitement of media environments to want to be jocular and friendly, maybe too friendly…

Yet, Sun Tzu in The Art of War, which is an ancient treatise about how not to create mayhem and loss, but how to win over opponents, writes, and I paraphrase here:

The General filled with humor, either in offense or defense on the plain of harsh engagement, is defeated

… for the General, demonstrating he is like all others, robs his troops of desire to rally behind him with serious intent.

Clear and continual evidence of Calling, of Fire in the Belly is clearly no laughing matter.

And for many voters, the strength of that fire in each candidate battling for supremacy of ideas and wherewithal to bring those ideas to fruition, is how they judge now what kind of fire a president will have later, once elected and guiding us through our current troubled times.

For other analyses of Fred Thompson’s withdrawal, see Volokh Conspiracy here and MvdG at Poligazette on ‘an awkward run,’ here.