Byron York has a story based on an interview he conducted with Fred Thompson in which the sort of candidate says:
“She has taken a lot of comments that should have been directed toward me,” Thompson told me. When he started looking into running for president, Thompson said, there was a lot to be done and very little time to do it, and his wife played a key role in getting things going. “We started literally from the kitchen table a few months ago,” he said. “While I did the things that I felt like I needed to do – I had a contract with NBC television, I had a contract with ABC radio, I was chairman of the advisory board on international security for the State Department, and a lot of other things – while I was disengaging from that and getting my thoughts together on issues and things of that nature, public comments I knew I would be called on to make, I asked her to do certain things for me. She did what I asked her to do.”
Assuming Thompson gets into the race, his candidacy will sink or swim based on whether he lives up to the expectations that have been built around him. All of this stuff about his wife is just background noise.