On the campaign trail, Thompson treats criticism that he doesn't have enough fire in the belly with a father-knows-best attitude.

"I've had the worst thing that can happen to a father, and the best thing that can happen to a father," Thompson told retirees this fall in South Carolina, in the drawl that's central to his persona. "I think you come out from the other end of that with a sense of what's important and not important."

Two of Thompson's most important experiences played out in the public eye: the Watergate hearings and his 1985 movie debut, "Marie." But with voters, he talks about parenting as much as he does about politics and acting.

Seeing daughter Hayden's sonogram — the first time he'd glimpsed any of his children in the womb — strengthened his anti-abortion views, he says. Wanting a stable world for his second family helped nudge him to audition for a part that would be less fun than TV shoots, but more consequential.

His wife, Jeri, a former Republican consultant, said that one night while they were still mulling whether to run, they sat at their kitchen table in Northern Virginia and saw their little girl at the top of the staircase.

"He had this very strange look on his face," she recalled of her husband. "I said, 'What are you thinking?' and he said, 'A lot goes through my mind from the time she's at the top step to the time she's at the bottom.' It's when he decided, I think."

Thompson has children older than his wife, 41, and younger than his grandchildren. His progeny span two generations, bookends like the Vietnam and Iraq wars to the major societal, economic and global changes that have rocked America in his lifetime.

STARTING OUT

Thompson was born in Alabama and raised in Tennessee by parents whose formal education ended with junior high school. He graduated from Memphis State University and the Vanderbilt University law school while working and raising children.

He read Barry Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative," started a Young Republicans group and worked on a congressional campaign, as a federal prosecutor and for the re-election of Tennessee Republican Sen. Howard Baker Jr.

Baker became a powerful mentor. He gave the young Thompson — whom Richard Nixon once called "dumb as hell" — a job as chief Republican counsel on the committee investigating Watergate.

Thompson wasn't the staffer who discovered Nixon's secret audio taping system, and he later admitted that he warned the White House that it would be revealed. He didn't initially understand the administration's culpability. But Baker arranged for Thompson to ask about the tapes in televised hearings, and that helped bring down the president.

Thompson got national exposure; a book deal and an anti-corruption reputation that drew clients, including state parole official Marie Ragghianti, to his new law practice.

Ragghianti exposed a cash-for-clemency scheme under Tennessee Gov. Ray Blanton, lost her job and hired Thompson to clear her name.

"He's personable and straightforward, and he was just what I needed at a very dark hour in my life," Ragghianti said in an interview.

There was a book about the case, then a movie with Sissy Spacek — "Marie" — in which Thompson played himself. That launched his career as an actor even as he kept a hand in on Capitol Hill.

IN THE SENATE

Celebrity eased Thompson's election to an open Senate seat; he replaced Tennessee's Al Gore, who became Bill Clinton's vice president.

Serving from 1994 through 2002, Thompson got mixed reviews. He was a reliable Republican vote, but critics said he lacked the appetite for the long hours and tedium and didn't leave much of a legacy.

In 1997, he was chosen to lead a Senate inquiry into alleged campaign finance abuses by the Clinton administration. Expanding that to look at Republican wrongdoing won him points with Democrats and independents, but angered many in his party. They also said he let the Clinton probe fizzle.

"He was rolled by Senate opponents and the Clinton machine," said Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. "He did not act with the aggressiveness and energy appropriate, given the allegations."

Longtime friends and associates say that Thompson's easygoing style and commitment to fairness shouldn't be confused with a lack of dedication.

"He learns something from the ground up," said Victoria Toensing, a lawyer who worked in the Reagan Justice Department and as Thompson's deputy when he was the Senate Intelligence Committee's special counsel in 1981.

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