"Stack 'em, rack 'em and pack 'em," Thompson instructs his team.

Then, turning to the cops, Thompson says: "We just bought ourselves, maybe, two hours. After that, those planes that are on fuel aren't gonna be circling. They're gonna be dropping on the White House lawn."

Thompson carried out a similar duty Wednesday in the negotiations on an increase in hard-money limits in the campaign finance reform bill proposed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. A disaster was looming, and Thompson's cool head and willingness to compromise helped avert a major problem for the reform brigade, so that soon the bill may in fact drop "on the White House lawn."

"If McCain-Feingold passes, it will not have happened if it weren't for Fred Thompson," said McCain's chief of staff, Mark Salter, on Wednesday evening.

Indeed, Wednesday morning, some members of the McCain-Feingold coalition were convinced that this issue might bring the whole bill down.

Democrats wanted the hard-dollar increase to be as small as possible, if made at all; Republicans wanted the donation limits lifted to at least what the post-Watergate reforms would be worth indexed to inflation. Thompson had the votes to pass his amendment, which would have increased limits on hard-money contributions to a candidate from $1,000 to $2,500 per individual, $5,000 to $7,500 per PAC, $5,000 to $10,000 per state/local party and $20,000 to $40,000 per national party, with an aggregate limit per donor set at $50,000 per calendar year.

But even though he had the votes for his amendment to pass -- with almost all of the GOP caucus, plus some Democrats, supporting it -- Thompson knew that McCain-Feingold couldn't pass were his amendment added to the bill as is. As one McCain-Feingold strategist put it, with those hard-money increases "the Democrats would walk. And there's no point in doing this if the Democrats walk."

So, as in "Die Hard 2," Thompson and the McCain-Feingold crew took two hours and kept the Senate in a holding pattern.

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