Bill Frist's balancing act
Late on St. Patrick's Day, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist went to the Senate floor and produced maybe the most galvanizing moment in the political debate over Terri Schiavo.
"I close this evening speaking more as a physician than as a U.S. senator," said the Tennessee Republican. It was a marker that Frist, 53, has often laid down, frequently to great effect. What Frist had to say about Schiavo was important not only because he was a chief proponent of congressional intervention in the case but because, as a renowned heart and lung transplant surgeon, he was a seasoned traveler in the opaque world of medical ethics and procedures. As Frist has often said, he is a man who has held the human heart in his hand, a fact that gives him a reassuring quality both rare and valuable in the world of Washington politics.
But this time may have been different. Frist's doubts about Schiavo's diagnosis instantly raised the temperature of the debate and raised questions about his motives. "There seems to be insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state," Frist said. "I don't see any justification in removing hydration and nutrition."
The notion of a long-distance diagnosis provoked a swift and harsh response.
"It just looked so craven," said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "He's taken an incredible beating for his 'diagnosis,' and I think he has been diminished by it." Stuart Youngner, chair of the department of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, said Frist "should turn in his doctor's badge." And Vanderbilt University political science Prof. Bruce Oppenheimer said Frist's comments made him look like a "run of the mill" politician.
But Frist is anything but. It took him a little more than one term in the Senate to become majority leader, and he has already made clear that he will leave after two terms to run for president in 2008. His influence is based neither on long tenure nor on a host of influential friends, though his closeness to President Bush surely hasn't hurt. Neither is his clout based on fear instilled or favors bestowed. Instead, his ascent has been fueled by an antipolitician mythology based on his legend as a surgeon, a healer who has cured the sick and rescued the dying.
Doctor Frist. He was elected to the Senate during the GOP landslide of 1994. Frist played up his medical credentials from the beginning, asking that he be called "Doctor" Frist instead of "Senator." More than once he has used the medical bags he keeps close at hand to administer care in the Capitol. The son of a prominent Nashville physician, Frist went to Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. His father and older brother began a healthcare company that would grow into the giant Hospital Corp. of America.
After the 2002 midterm elections, when Republicans regained control of the Senate, a euphoric Majority Leader Trent Lott made a controversial speech in which he seemed to praise the late Sen. Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential campaign of 1948. The White House slowly abandoned Lott, and before Christmas Bill Frist had emerged as the new face of the congressional GOP.
With his efforts on the Schiavo case, Frist has particularly endeared himself to the animated Christian right wing of the party, which will be crucial as he begins his campaign for the presidency. Frist spokeswoman Amy Call dismissed the idea that Frist was playing politics, saying that "the motivation for him here is that a woman's life is at stake." Sooner rather than later, however, the question for Frist will be whether his reaction to this human tragedy is seen politically as a boost or a blunder.
This story appears in the April 4, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.