WASHINGTON -- Fatherhood and ambition.

In Fred Thompson's life, they rise and fall together, a recurring couplet in the nostalgic story of a Tennessee fella who's guided more by life's surprises and others' expectations than he is by any master plan.

Consider:

• The small-town jock called ''Freddie'' and ''Moose,'' who, at 17, upon getting his high school girlfriend pregnant, married her, heeded her politically connected family and made something of himself.

• The divorced U.S. senator, lawyer, lobbyist and actor who dropped out of politics when one of his three grown children died from a prescription drug overdose.

• The unlikely 65-year-old comeback kid, now remarried with a 4-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy, who's running for the Republican nomination for president.

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.

Thompson has children older than his wife, 41, and younger than his grandchildren.

Thompson 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 reelection 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 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.

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 Capitol Hill.

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

From 1994 through 2002, Thompson got mixed reviews, though he was a reliable Republican vote.

Thompson helped manage Chief Justice John Roberts' confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2005, was chairman of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board and championed President Bush's commutation of White House aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby's prison sentence in the CIA leak case -- all while taping Law & Order.

When retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said last year he wouldn't seek the presidency, Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., pressed Thompson to get in.

Wamp thinks that Thompson's image and message are selling points, and so is his personal experience of ``raising a second family in a different generation than the first.''

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