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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Vice President Frist?

I will be interested in watching how the Senate's filibuster compromise affects Senator Bill Frist's presidential ambitions. Like Lyndon Johnson, Frist became Senate Majority Leader in only his second term, but whereas Johnson had become Minority Leader in his first term and switched job titles when Democrats took control of the Senate at the start of his second term, only happenstance--in the form of Trent Lott's verbal indescretions--opened the position for Frist. Frist gained the position more on the strength of support from President Bush than based on any particular prominance in the Republican caucus in the Senate.

One reading of the filibuster compromise is that Frist overreached in pressing for the "nuclear option" of eliminating filibusters for judicial nomineees, an initiative that disquieted a number of his more senior colleagues who have more settled ideas about what the institutional order of the Senate should be. The compromise forged by senators more senior than Frist effectively bypasses his authority by lining up seven Republican signatories of the compromise against the "nuclear option." Adding the votes of these seven Republicans--who "commit to oppose the rules changes in the 109th Congress"-- to their own 44, Democrats have the 51 votes it would take to beat the "nuclear option.

Frist will not seek reelection in 2006, freeing himself up for a certain presidential campaign. His inability to prevent a compromise he was visibly unhappy with may be an early sign that he is now the lame-duck creature of a lame-duck President. At the same time, he avoids association with a compromise that does not play well with the conservative party base whose support may be critical in securing a presidential nomination. After leaving office in January 2007, however, he becomes a presidential candidate without a portfolio, campaigning on the strength of what by then may be widely viewed as an accidental and undistinguished stint as Majority Leader. Yet he is likely to be the presumptive frontrunner and the favored candidate of a sitting President who really, really likes to win. Depending on how the next two years play out for the Adminsitration and in his own career, Frist may need a bit of a boost. At that point, having a Vice President who will retire to Wyoming in 2009 may start to seem like a luxury that Bush Republicans can ill afford. In that case, and assuming the affected parties are amenable, I would not be surprised to see Frist move into the vice-presidency around the close of his Senate service. Senate leadership experience is always valuable for a Vice President, and the office would offer Frist a nice springboard and some valuable foreign-policy bona fides.


posted at 12:17 AM

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