WHEN FRED THOMPSON dropped out of the presidential race Tuesday, he did so in a way that was completely consistent with his candidacy.

"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States," he said in a statement. "I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."

And it was over.

Last spring, as Thompson publicly contemplated a run for the White House, many conservatives lined up to support him. He was, like them, a conservative. And he was electable. Within weeks of Thompson's first hint that he would run, he had surged to leads in several national polls among potential Republican nominees. And well before he was an official candidate, conservatives in Congress were offering to support him if he ran. Things were going so well in April that Thompson joked: "I can't afford to announce. I'm doing too well."

He quickly began to assemble the key elements of his non-campaign campaign. He consulted advisers from his days in Tennessee and friends from the Senate, and recruited a team of volunteers to handle the growing crush of media requests. In short order, he had the basics of a campaign operation, high-level political support, a recognizable face, and the potential (at least) for significant fundraising. He heard from many quarters that he would be late the moment he announced and that he should get in as soon as possible.

Thompson had other ideas. He wanted to run a different kind of campaign, to make up his own rules.

"The world changes so rapidly and politics do too," he said last spring. "And not only has technology changed, but now a lot of the primaries have changed and the question is whether the old way of looking at things still applies to these new sets of circumstances in all cases. I don't think they do."

Thompson and his team believed that new technologies would be critical. One of the reasons Thompson first seriously considered running for president was the reaction he got to commentaries he did for ABC radio. At times on his own, at times as a substitute for Paul Harvey, Thompson provided his characteristically candid and sharp views on everything from Iraq and Iran to college football. Many of those commentaries ran on conservative websites and the feedback Thompson got was overwhelming and positive. He understood it as a hunger for a candidate who could talk about big issues--War and Peace, Social Security, entitlement reform--and could say things that were not politically correct by communicating directly with his audience.

"The response I got encouraged me that I could do this in a different way and not have to run for most of my adult life, not have to raise as much money as quickly as some others, to be able to do some things in a different way," he said last spring. "What I've always believed, and a large element of what I've always done in politics is a little--it's a little bit antiestablishment, a little bit of trying to reform, has always been doing things differently."

So rather than spend time kissing the rings of precinct captains in rural Iowa or bouncing from townhall to townhall across New Hampshire, Thompson would stay home and shoot short videos to be released on the Internet. Cable news programs, always looking to fill airtime, would rebroadcast them endlessly and talk radio would take to his bold conservative ideas. Millions of Americans knew his face from Law & Order and his film career and when they put the face with his name, the thinking went, fundraising would come relatively easily.

Although there were doubts among some Thompson advisers, many of whom wanted their candidate to run a more traditional campaign, one event early in the process seemed to reinforce their new media strategy. When left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore attacked Thompson for smoking Cuban cigars, the candidate shot a 37-second video response. Thompson, chomping on a cigar, came back forcefully and ended his mini-lecture by suggesting that Moore seek mental help. Within minutes of its posting, the video had been linked on the Drudge Report and it spread across the web at a speed that surprised even Thompson's most pro-Internet advisers.