After a bumbling entrance as a White House hopeful and a month in which he has barely bothered to shake a voter’s hand, Fred Thompson ambled back onto the campaign trail yesterday with one question hanging over him: does he really want to be president?

Mr Thompson, 65, the former Republican senator turned actor, began a two-day tour of Florida after an extraordinarily light schedule that has mystified even some of his own staff, because it has played into perceptions that he is an indolent part-timer. The Law & Order star, who entered the race on September 6 as the heir to Ronald Reagan and the answer to conservatives’ prayers, has since turned in a series of lacklustre performances that have many wondering if he has any hunger for the Oval Office.

In a flower shop in Celebration, an immaculate town near Disney World, Mr Thompson told a table of businesswomen: “I haven’t had a burning ambition all my life to be president. Some say that translates into laziness. If people think I’m a little laid back and don’t have the drive and ambition, that’s their decision. But I’ve done alright just being me.”

Mr Thompson has certainly done a good impression of a part-time candidate. After months of “testing the waters”, his announcement speech was rambling.

While his rivals have been tearing across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the crucial early nominating states, he has not visited them in weeks. In an address to Florida Republicans on Saturday night, he spoke for just four minutes. In a recent speech he asked his somnolent audience for applause. He told a reporter he didn’t remember enough about the 2005 Terri Schiavo right-to-die case to comment. He said he had not really bothered to analyse his rivals’ policy positions.

George Will, the conservative columnist, said Mr Thompson’s entry into the race was “the strangest launch product since that of New Coke in 1985,” a disaster that saw it yanked from shops after 80 days. Quin Hillyer, of the conservative American Spectator, said his campaign was a “themeless pudding”. James Dobson, a religious conservative leader, said Mr Thompson “has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want-to’.”

Yet the past 48 hours in Florida have seen Mr Thompson continue a recent improvement that could yet land him his party’s nomination. He is still running second behind Rudy Giuliani in national polls and is well placed in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida. He raised over $9 million in the past three months, a competitive total.

In a prime-time candidates’ debate on Sunday night in Orlando, he was far more forceful and energetic. He was asked if he was lazy. He reeled off his achievements — father at 17, assistant US attorney at 28, Watergate counsel at 30, winning election to the Senate twice — before adding: “If a man can do all that and be lazy, I recommend it to everybody.” The audience loved it.

The Times sat in on a focus group of 23 undecided Republican voters who watched the debate with the Republican pollster Frank Luntz. There was still no consensus on one favoured candidate. None of the four leading contenders — Mr Thompson, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — have inspired conservatives, a key voting bloc in the nominating process. But all said they had a much better opinion of Mr Thompson after the debate than before it.

The other winners were Mr Giuliani — most said he is the best qualified to beat Hillary Clinton, the main priority for the group; and Mike Huckabee, the impressive and articulate former Arkansas governor who is emerging as a genuine alternative for conservatives.

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