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By Howard Fineman
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Sen. Bill Frist is a heart surgeon who admires what he calls "the surgical personality": precise, sensitive to details, focused. He and his aides thought they had found a politically surgical way for him to participate in a nationally televised prayer service with fervent religious conservatives at a megachurch in Louisville, Ky., next Sunday. The topic: the need to ease the Senate filibuster debate rule so that the Republican majority can confirm President George W. Bush's most controversial judicial nominations. Frist's role: a brief, four-minute videotape stressing a secular argument--that presidents deserve "up or down" votes on all picks. "The senator won't be talking about his own faith and won't be speaking from a pulpit," said an aide.
But even Solomon couldn't split this baby. The hemorrhaging began when the sponsor, Family Research Council, hit the Web with fliers and press releases dubbing the event "Justice Sunday--Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith" and depicting a perplexed teenage boy weighing a Bible in one hand and a judge's gavel in the other. The flame-throwing message--filibusterers are anti-Christian--predictably infuriated Democrats (and the editorial page of The New York Times, which had front-paged the story). But even some Bible-belt Republicans were troubled by Frist's involvement in the event. "Questioning a senator's motives in that way is a very dangerous precedent," Sen. Lindsey Grahamof South Carolina told NEWSWEEK. "That goes to a level where the Senate has never gone before. It is a very unhealthy turn of events."
So goes the saga of Bill Frist, who is in a never-ending and often messy struggle to harness the conflicting forces of his public life: between the soothing words he needs to utter as Senate majority leader and the strong preaching he needs to deliver as a GOP presidential wanna-be; between the science-based empiricism of medicine and the faith-based absolutes of the Gospels; between the hard-shell Southern base of the Republican Party (and his own base in Tennessee) and the Blue State moderates he'll have to appeal to should he manage to secure the 2008 nomination. All the vectors are crossing now, as Frist tries to win a dicey vote on watering down the filibuster rule. "If he wants to run for president, this is a test Bill Frist has to pass," said Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union. Frist's appeal--and his predicament--are symbolized by his list of titles: "Majority Leader" on the floor, "M.D." on his office door, plus a new one some of his colleagues derisively call him behind his back in the cloakroom: "Reverend."
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There's power--or at least good publicity--in earnest efforts to blend roles. The doctor in Frist is a go-to guy on bioterrorism, for example. After 9/11--and the anthrax episode on Capitol Hill--he wrote a useful how-to book on emergency treatment of diseases that could be spread in an attack. But multitasking can look politically manipulative--or worse. At least that's how many fellow members of the Harvard Medical School class of 1978 view his role in the case of the late Terri Schiavo. As she lay dying in Florida, Frist--who said he had reviewed court documents and videos--appeared on the Senate floor. Saying he "spoke more as a doctor than a senator," he declared that "there seems to be insufficient information to conclude" that Schiavo--an icon to religious conservatives--was in a "persistent vegetative state" that would justify allowing her to die.
In a private letter to Frist, NEWSWEEK has learned, 31 of the 165 members of his medical-school class accused him of using his medical degree improperly. Frist's office declined to comment; according to public records, at least 13 of the 31 had donated money to Democrats in the last five years. Still, Dr. Lewis Rose, an oncologist who said he voted for Bush last year, insisted Frist had overstepped. "He had no right to use the cloak of the Hippocratic oath, no matter who was right," Rose told NEWSWEEK. "He's got medical training and a medical perspective, but he is not a practicing physician and has no business using that in politics. Period. If he does, he won't get any of his classmates' votes who signed this."
For now, for Frist, wooing Harvard alumni is the least of his concerns. Far more urgent is winning the pre-presidential allegiance of the Republicans' grass-roots Christian soldiers. With no obvious successor to Bush--except for brother Jeb in Florida, who may be a little too obvious for his own good--the competition for this crucial constituency already is as ferocious as a last lap at Talladega. There are plenty of less-encumbered competitors eager to outdo Frist. The potential list includes fellow Southerners such as Sen. George Allen of Virginia, Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi. Another is Frist's third-in-command, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. He told NEWSWEEK that he would consider impeachment proceedings against the federal judges in the Schiavo case; that he favors term limits (rather than lifetime appointments) for federal judges, and that he would consider redrawing the boundaries of judicial districts to break up the liberal Ninth Circuit. Frist, aides said, does not support any such ideas.
Frist's solution to an "out of control" judiciary is limited to easing the filibuster rule. But winning the vote to do so is a difficult task even though he has a 55-vote majority. Three Republicans have abandoned him--including John McCain--and several more have made noises about doing so. Frist is still trying to work out a compromise, and will offer one to the Democrats next week. Few think it will fly. McCain, on his own, is also trying to work out a deal with some Red State Democrats, NEWSWEEK has learned. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, whom Frist replaced as leader in a painful episode, is pushing an uncompromisingly hard line--happy, insiders say, to make life at the top uncomfortable for Frist, whose own advisers are divided as he alternates threats and peace feelers. "Some conservatives think Frist is dithering on this," said Craig Shirley, a GOP lobbyist and author, "and making his own situation worse." On the other hand, Shirley said, there was good news for Frist. "The best way to win the Republican caucuses in Iowa is to get The New York Times to attack you," he said. "It's almost formulaic."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Frist fled the capital last weekend, going home to Nashville to tend to his political-action committee (VOLPAC--as in Tennessee Volunteers) and supervise the remodeling of the Frist family mansion in Belle Meade, where the senator grew up and where he will live after he quits the Senate in January 2007. A Presbyterian and lifelong churchgoer, he was scheduled to attend services on Sunday as usual--and he wasn't scheduled to appear on any of the Sunday talk shows. TV is for next Sunday, up Interstate 65 in Louisville.
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