Time Mag: Frist is "universally described as kind and intelligent"

Bush_Eats_Beef

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Sun Apr-02-06 04:38 PM
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Time Mag: Frist is "universally described as kind and intelligent"

Prognosis Looks Grim, Doc
Why would a man universally described as kind and intelligent suddenly start acting like a dodo? Presidential ambition, of course.

:spray:

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1179318,00.html

There are, I suppose, politicians who have had more dreadful years than Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican who serves as Senate majority leader. Bill Clinton had his season of Lewinsky. Richard Nixon had Watergate. But rarely has a major politician endured such a spell of relentless day-to-day ugly.

Frist, once esteemed as a citizen-politician, a heart- and lung-transplant surgeon who spent part of each year donating his services in the most desperate parts of Africa, has transformed himself into the ultimate political opportunist. His moves�like last week's ludicrous attempt to hijack the Senate's immigration debate and move it in a punitive, populist direction�have been so clunky that he has lost the respect of his colleagues, especially Republicans. (The Democrats are thrilled by his ineptitude.) "I hear he was a pretty good surgeon," a Republican Senator said last week when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader.

Why would a man universally described as kind and intelligent suddenly start acting like a dodo? Presidential ambition, of course. Frist's descent began a year ago, when he destroyed his reputation for medical probity by announcing, on the Senate floor, that he had seen the videotapes of Terri Schiavo, "and from my standpoint as a physician, I would be very careful before I would come to the floor and say this ... Based on the footage provided me ... she does respond." This was utter nonsense, as subsequent autopsies of Schiavo's brain proved. "He didn't have to go that far," another Republican Senator told me. "He simply could have opposed pulling the plug on Schiavo."

A series of terrible leadership moves have ensued. There was Frist's effort to deploy the "nuclear option" � that is, to perform radical surgery on the Senate's filibuster rules in order to allow votes on President Bush's more extreme judicial appointments. But the nuclear option was thwarted when 14 Senate moderates cut a deal to keep the rules and allow votes on some of the appointees. "We saved him on that," said a G.O.P. staff member involved in the negotiations. "Frist never had the votes he needed for the nuclear option." More recently, Frist has embarrassed himself on the Dubai Ports deal. He was one of the first Republicans to oppose the deal--his opposition made it safe for the rest of the party to buck President Bush--but he immediately retreated after a White House briefing. "As I've gotten more information, I have a greater comfort level," he said. Translation: I shot my mouth off before I knew anything because I wanted to thrill the G.O.P. base.