It?s time for Sen. Frist to resign
“Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.”
That’s how Sen. Bill Frist described the problems he’d face trying to run for president while running the Senate. His comment to the Associated Press was an explanation for why he’s leaving public office at the end of this year, but his own words serve as a succinct description of his record as Senate leader.
The time has come for Frist to make a choice. If he wants to run for president, as he clearly does, he should resign his leadership post. Now. If he clings to his Senate office, the legislative agenda for the rest of the year will turn on Frist’s personal ambitions, not the nation’s pressing needs. And America simply cannot afford that.
The way he’s mishandled the current debate over immigration demonstrates the problem. In order to propitiate right-wing demands for a crackdown on undocumented workers, Frist peremptorily scheduled a floor debate on the issue. Then he compounded his high-handed tactics by proposing his own, highly punitive bill. It might work as a Frist-for-President campaign document, but as legislation it was a disaster.
Locking up 12 million illegals and sending them home is both wildly unworkable and unwise. And in a larger sense he also hurts his own party. As Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., noted, it would be “political suicide” for the GOP to alienate Hispanics, the fastest growing voter group in the country.
Fortunately, Frist was outmaneuvered in the Judiciary Committee. A bipartisan coalition of senators defied the leader’s pressure tactics and cobbled together a worthy measure providing legal status for undocumented workers and outlining a program that could eventually lead them to citizenship.
That success forced Frist to start talking about a compromise, but since emotions on both sides are so overheated, the prospects are uncertain. “I’m very frustrated,” he whined, but he helped make the mess in the first place by placing his personal agenda above his responsibilities as Senate leader.
Calling for Frist’s departure is based on ample historical precedent, and we summon as our first witness Howard Baker, the Senate Republican leader in the late 1970s. We covered Baker’s failed run for president in 1980, and by his own testimony, what he tried to do was impossible.
Every time he went to Iowa for a speech, he told us, some emergency would summon him back to Washington. And Senate business set his agenda, depriving him of the chance to focus on the issues most favorable to his candidacy.
Unlike Frist, however, Baker acted fairly and did not try to use the Senate as his political playground. After losing to Ronald Reagan and leaving the Senate four years later, Baker was succeeded as Republican leader by Bob Dole. Dole, too, realized he could not do two jobs at once, and after winning the Republican nomination in 1996, resigned his seat to concentrate on his candidacy.
According to The New York Times, Baker recently advised Frist to take his own experience to heart, but Frist rejected the advice. As Baker put it: “He said, ‘Well, I understand the difficulties you had, but the circumstances are different and the time is different.”
That’s right, the time is different. It’s more imperative than ever that Frist recognize Baker’s wisdom.
But no. Forget Iraq. Forget the deficit. Forget the millions of Americans without health insurance. Frist has decided that the Senate should spend June considering two incendiary and irresponsible constitutional amendments: one would ban flag burning, the other would define marriage as only occurring between a man and a woman.
If Bill Frist wants to run for president by pandering to his party’s most extreme ideologues, that’s his right. But he has no right to turn the Senate into his personal campaign platform. He should do the honorable thing:
Resign.
Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].