SIOUX CITY - By most accounts, including one filed by yours truly, Fred Thompson's campaign for President kicked off with a rather lackluster event in Des Moines yesterday afternoon. The crowd was much smaller than most expected, and their response to the candidate could be characterized as more polite than enthusiastic.

So as the caravan headed down I80 West for the two hour drive to Council Bluffs for the evening event, the questions hung thick in the air: Would Fred's second event be able to escape being tagged with another dreaded "failed to meet expectations" headline? Would the change of venue help the candidate connect with voters in a way that seemed to be missing from the first event?

As it turned out, the answer to both questions was definitely "yes." As Fred's bus rolled to a stop in Bayliss Park across from a recently dedicated memorial to military veterans, a couple hundred people waited enthusiastically for his arrival. The crowd cheered as Fred exited the bus, and after suffering through a brief introduction from a local official who concluded by introducing him as "Senator Fred Roberts" - to be fair, the man had just finished discussing Thompson's role in shepherding Chief Justice John Roberts through the nomination process - Thompson launched into a modified version of the same speech he'd just given hours earlier in Des Moines.

The difference between the first event, however, was palpable. Standing there without a podium and without any of the other formal trappings of the first event, Fred spun a folksy, down home version of his life story - which he calls an "American story - growing up as a farm boy from middle Tennessee and eventually rising to the the heights of power in Washington DC and stardom in Hollywood.

From there Fred moved on, as he'd done just hours before in Des Moines, to talk about national security and the global war on terror and his "first principles" of individual freedom and limited government. The crowd cheered spontaneously as Fred made his points, and I saw a number of people nodding their heads in assent, especially when he talked about the overspending, waste, fraud, and abuse of the government.

Thompson took a number of questions from the crowd, covering abortion (he touted his 100% pro-life record in the Senate), education (he voted for No Child Left Behind but now thinks the results don't justify an increased federal role) and which departments of the federal government he'd be willing to abolish (he demurred on providing a list but said all departments could be reformed and streamlined to work better).

Response to Thompson appeared quite positive. Jerry Hiatt, 56, a builder from Council Bluffs, liked what he saw from Fred. "He certainly talks like a conservative," Hiatt said when I asked for his first impressions of Thompson. His wife, Jimette, a nurse, agreed, saying she liked that Thompson wasn't "wishy-washy" on abortion and also that she appreciated that Fred didn't spend time "bad mouthing" any of the other candidates. Both said they could see themselves supporting Thompson at the caucuses in January.

Gary Newman and his wife, Reta, two retirees from down the road in Glenwood, also gave Thompson favorable reviews, calling him "down to earth," "approachable," and saying they agreed with nearly everything Fred said during his remarks.

As the buses rolled up the highway last night to Sioux City, we drove right into the teeth of a vicious lightning storm. Strikes lit up the sky to the north and the east, and at one point the rain fell so hard from the black cloud above us that the caravan was forced to slow to a near crawl, with hazard lights flashing. For a moment it looked as if we might have to stop, because even with the windshield wipers flapping furiously it was nearly impossible to see the outline of the road just a few feet ahead.

Eventually, we made it safely through, but as we pulled into Sioux City for the night I couldn't help but wonder if Fred believe in omens. The storm could be a harbinger of things to come for his bid to win the Republican nomination.