Other than the right to bear children well into one’s 60s and unashamedly express the love of one’s own mama, former Sen. Fred Thompson and I agree on just about nothing. He’s anti-choice (and would overturn Roe v. Wade), he doubts humanity’s responsibility for global warming and he not only supported the invasion of Iraq, but wants to keep boots on the ground till the proverbial cows come home, which, hope-soaked hearings to the contrary, seems to be when the whole Middle East is turned to pasture. Granted, the man thinks “mistakes have been made,” but he also believes that “America should not have to apologize for anything.”

Guess it was the Iraqis’ fault all along.

Yet, as diametrically and intrinsically opposed as are Thompson and I, there’s something alluring about the man, so when the latest presidential candidate made the requisite Republican pilgrimage to Versailles last week, I braved the scrum of media to see if I could discover just what that certain something was.

And, to be sure, there was something, something of a scrum, anyway, a phalanx of cameras and Crack Berries from just about every news organization in the free world. In fact, the assembly was so thick that an average passerby might think Paris and Lindsay and Nicole had all come to Little Havana for “café cubano.”

But if there were more reporters than supporters there for this still-early stage of the campaign, it was only because this running man is no mere candidate — he’s a bona fide celebrity.

Best known for playing New York District Attorney Arthur Branch in NBC’s perpetually airing hit series Law & Order, Thompson has appeared in some 17 movies, including No Way Out, the Roger Donaldson-directed remake of The Black Clock (starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman); Roland Joffe’s Fat Man and Little Boy (with Paul Newman); John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (with Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin); Tony Scott’s Days of Thunder (with Cruise, Kidman and Duvall); Renny Harlin’s Die Hard 2 (with you know who); Martin Scorcese’s Cape Fear (with DeNiro and Nolte) and Wolfgang Peterson’s The Line of Fire (with Eastwood and Malkovich).

By any estimate, he has considerable onscreen experience, and that experience is evident in his rather considerable bearing: Every word’s weighted in a homespun Hollywood baritone, every gesture visually emphasizes a point, and each look gives enough pause to the proceedings that you become sucked right into his narrative.

In other words, the cat’s got stagecraft. He can spin a story, and he can work a room. It’s not so much a studied stagecraft, though; it’s something that came to Thompson almost organically — and by accident.

See, 20 years ago, attorney Fred represented ousted Tennessee Parole Board Chair Marie Ragghianti in a wrongful termination suit against then-Gov. Ray Blanton, who’d been accused of a cash-for-clemency scheme that Ragghianti reportedly refused to be a part of. Fred (and Marie) won the case and, when Director Roger Donaldson picked up the rights to the resulting book, he asked Thompson to play himself on the big screen.

The rest, as they say, became his Hollywood history.

Still, even someone as cinematically connected as Ronald Reagan knew that a man needs more than mere celebrity if he’s to become president of the United States, and Thompson takes a great stake in the knowledge of his predecessor.

Make that steak. Thompson’s kitchen table conservatism is the kinda meat and potatoes brand of the branch best cooked on a hearth, seasoned with small-town savvy and served in heaping plates of red, white and blue. Simple food for simple folk, but far from simple-minded.

Click “principles” on Thompson’s campaign site, www.fred08.com, and a single category drops down: federalism. Yep, you heard me, federalism, that mythological system employed — and in many ways invented — by the framers of our Constitution.

Like those framers before him, Fred’s a firm believer in “free markets, rights of property and rule of law.” To Thompson, those fathers always knew best, and it’s in all of our best interests to get back to what they knew.

Yet, Thompson also firmly believes “our rights come from God, not government.” And, as a member in reportedly good standing of the Churches of Christ, a nondenominational New Testament-based group affiliated with the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement — now celebrating its 200th year — he’s duty bound to prove it.

The CoC itself is a bit of an odd sect of some 2 million members (1.3 million in the United States) who eschew musical accompaniment in their worship (hymns are sung a cappella — or else). It traces its roots back to the founding of Virginia, and its philosophy to that of John Locke.

These days, the church’s original slogan swings a little hippie dippy ("In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love"), but it’s highly unlikely its founders would get along on the Haight. These were pious folk who took the Bible’s word so literally that I’m surprised they came up with a slogan at all.

But slogan they did, and since it came about in the earliest days of the 19th century, we won’t fault Fred. The CoC’s practice of having no formally recognized headquarters, councils or hierarchal church government, though, does seem a bit strange for such an oft-committeed presidential candidate. We’ll grant, however, that the church’s overseeing by “a plurality of elders” does make a certain perfect sense.

Yet, even as popular as is the CoC in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., (five congregations for a population of 14,000), Fred’s gonna need more than a fervent fringe to beat even a Rudy Giuliani — he’s gonna need the heartland, he’s gonna need the hinterlands and, of course, he’s gonna need Cubans.

At Versailles, Thompson delivered the hard-line status quo roar everyone wanted to hear, and they roared back accordingly — sanctions would remain in place, as, of course, would the embargo; Radio and TV Martí would keep broadcasting; and, should Fidel Castro or his henchmen decide to try another Mariel, “he needs to be told that wouldn’t be a very good idea.” Fred was on fire there, smoldering in ire and conviction, and the crowd lapped it up.

Which, naturally, is the point — Thompson stands tall (he’s 6 feet 6 inches), he stands firm (“we won’t back down”) and he stands “imbued with a need to protect our country.” You get the feeling Fred would gladly — and single-handedly — take on the entire regime. And should Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales get any dim ideas, he’d kick their asses too.

And don’t think for a moment that Fred doesn’t have it in him to do so. The 65-year-old’s quick to remind you he’s got both a 4-year-old and a 10-month-old back at the house and a mama back in Tennessee who’s still going strong at 87. And while Thompson’s not-so-quiet storming of Versailles may have been mostly a case of converting the faithful, his off-the-cuff stump did sound presidential, and, in this sound-bitten day and age, that just might be enough.