Frist eyes presidential run in 2008: But job as majority leader not always best stepping stone

WASHINGTON (AP)

There is little doubt Bill Frist is preparing for a 2008 presidential race, but what is less clear is whether his current position as Senate majority leader will help him land the Oval Office job.

“There’s no doubt that he’s acting methodically,” political scientist Norm Ornstein of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute said after watching the Tennessee Republican at the GOP’s national convention in New York. “He’s been everywhere.”

Everywhere included visits with delegates from New Hampshire and South Carolina, states with critical early primaries. Frist also met with delegates from pivotal swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

During the coffee klatches and a speech to the convention, Frist touted his pre-Senate experience as a surgeon and talked about health care. He also got publicity for early-morning runs in Central Park and hitting the party circuit, including a bash to benefit AIDS charities.

“He’s done himself a lot of good at this convention,” said Ornstein. “He turned the focus away from being majority leader to being a very attractive guy.”

History shows that’s critical. Fifteen senators eventually went on to become president, but only one Senate majority leader — Lyndon Johnson — has become president since the leadership post was created nearly a century ago.

And Johnson’s trajectory was hardly direct. When he first sought to trade in the majority leader job for the presidency in 1960, Johnson lost the nomination to the junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Johnson eventually became president by way of the vice presidency.

More recently, Republican Robert Dole tried to defeat former President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Dole was majority leader at the time, but stepped down after realizing he couldn’t run the Senate and a presidential campaign simultaneously.

Donald Ritchie, who serves as the Senate’s associate historian, says senators have generally had a harder time than governors winning their party’s nomination, and Senate majority leaders have even more difficulty than their rank-and-file colleagues.

“The majority leader takes a lot of lumps not only individually, but he also takes lumps for the institution,” Ritchie said. “There are additional burdens that a leader has to bear.”

Majority leaders have to please voters back home as well as their notoriously independent-minded Senate colleagues — a job former Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee likened to herding cats.

“When you suddenly add a third constituency … those who might make you the party’s nominee, you’ve got a trifecta that is pretty hard to produce a winning ticket,” said George Washington University professor Stephen Hess. “You really are better off being a back bencher like John F. Kennedy.”

Frist, who has pledged to limit himself to two Senate terms ending in 2006, faced high expectations when he became majority leader.

It happened unexpectedly two years ago after then-Majority Leader Trent Lott made an insensitive racial remark and was deposed.