Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist better find a cure for his obvious case of Potomac fever. It’s becoming embarrassingly clear he’s not worth a damn when it comes to misleading and getting away with having done so. What’s more, he’s obviously a follower, not a leader.
Both defects — fatal ones for a Republican president wannabe — have manifested themselves in recent days.
First, the other shoe dropped in the matter of unwarranted meddling and unabashed political grandstanding in the Terri Schiavo tragedy. Autopsy results were released showing conclusively the poor woman had been brain dead and cortically blind for many years.
Frist responded by making a public statement last week that he hadn’t diagnosed Schiavo’s condition after watching a years-old video of her supposedly reacting and responding to those around her. Al Franken, among others, promptly had a field day replaying a tape of Frist, who’s a physician, weighing in with what can only be called a supposedly expert medical opinion on Schiavo’s condition — one completely at odds with Frist’s depiction of his own statements after the autopsy results came out.
Back in March, Frist announced he didn’t know if Congress would take up President Bush’s DOA proposal to privatize Social Security in “a week, a month, six months or a year.” One day later, Frist asserted, “We need to do it this year — not next year, but this year.” In the interim, the White House informed Frist what he had thought was wrong, then gave him a shiny new thought to talk about. Talk Frist did, suddenly saying just what he’d been told to say.
Yesterday, as discussed in our previous post, Senate Democrats fended off an attempt to force a vote on sending John Bolton to the U.N. as ambassador. Evidently conscious of how unlikely he was to come up with six more votes for Bolton and forgetting how short a leash he’s on, Frist said he probably wouldn’t schedule another vote on the Bolton nomination.
We don’t know what was on the luncheon menu at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue today, but Frist certainly emerged with egg all over his face. As Bush’s guest, Frist learned that he (Frist) will continue to pursue a voting majority for Bolton and will schedule another vote. He made his newest intentions on the matter public faster than you can say, “Yes sir. Will that be all, sir?”
Would someone check to see if this guy’s mounted on casters? In last year’s election, Republicans took one change of position by Sen. John Kerry and turned it into a nine-month-long, multimillion-dollar, scorched-earth campaign to brand him a flip-flopper. Does Frist have any idea how vulnerable he will be to retaliation in kind? That would be retaliation showing him to be, if not a flip-flopper, the consummate yes man with no plan, agenda or spine of his own.
If Frist actually runs for president, we can only conclude he does not. Being that out of touch with reality may play well with those who bankroll and program Republican politicians, but it just might be more than most voters can stomach.
