Fred Thompson is officially in the 2008 Presidential Race!

At 7:57 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, while taping "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" for broadcast later in the evening, Fred Thompson finally said: "I'm running for president of the United States."

The studio audience responded with thunderous applause.

Thompson rejected the notion that he has waited too long to get into the race for the White House.

"People treat politicians sort of like the dentist -- they don't have anything to do with them till they have to," he said.

"A lot of people have been, of course, running for some time. Everybody kind of changed the rules.

"Usually you don't announce until after Labor Day, but they started running a lot earlier, spending millions of dollars and so forth, and everyone said that you couldn't run this year without raising a hundred million dollars and starting much earlier. I don't believe that," Thompson said, adding that he doubts voters will say: "That guy would make a very good president, but he didn't get in soon enough."

Video of the announcement is here.

Actually, the Thompson campaign might well have the advantage of novelty behind it. After all, how many folks are simply tired of the current crop of candidates on both sides of the political aisle?

Here's the first campaign video.