Thompson reading from Arnold's script***

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson's political playbook - a high-profile visit to "The Tonight Show," a splashy bus tour, the efforts to take a familiar actor and reintroduce him in a new political role - contains pages that look eerily familiar to California voters. San Francisco Chronicle.

Maybe that's because the former Tennessee senator has at his side some of the same key aides who, in nine short weeks, helped transform Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger from "The Terminator" into the chief executive of the Democratic-leaning state that is the most populous in the nation.

Thompson plans to formally kick off his presidential bid - shaped around the themes of "security, unity and prosperity" - beginning today with a blitz that reflects his media savvy and his advantage as an actor better known to many Americans as District Attorney Arthur Branch on TV's "Law & Order."

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The New York Times political blog also obtained this first internet commercial for Thompson: