Good read, check it out."Bill Frist is beginning to look like the John Edwards of the Republican Party—a presidential candidate who is running for vice president, even if he doesn't yet know it.
Edwards, you will remember, was the man to watch three years out from the 2004 election, the senator billed as the next Bill Clinton. In the end, the Democratic Party establishment was charmed but underwhelmed. Edwards slipped into the V.P. slot; the more time he spent in the limelight, the less he shone.
To be clear, Frist has not yet decided whether he will run in 2008. But he is certainly doing a good impression of it. He also, however, has a serious day job as Senate majority leader. And it's not always easy to serve as the president's shepherd of the party faithful on Capitol Hill while you keep one eye on moving to the White House yourself.
Frist has made clear he will give up his Tennessee Senate seat in 2006, keeping his pledge to serve just two terms and leaving himself free to campaign for president. He has begun to court his party's conservative base. Last Friday night in Manchester, N.H., he schmoozed the local politicians at a Republican Party dinner, reminiscing about the happy New England weekends he and his wife Karyn spent in their younger days.
Like Edwards, Frist has an enviable résumé: He is a doctor, a Southerner, a Christian family man, and a hell of a success story. The great-great grandson of one of the founders of Chattanooga, Tenn., and the son of a successful doctor, Frist went to high school in Nashville, college at Princeton, and medical school at Harvard. At 53, with his neat part and nice smile he still looks like an overgrown schoolboy, the kind who would bring an apple to the teacher if he weren't now the principal. Frist has performed more than 150 heart and lung transplants. But most of his estimated $20 million in wealth comes from his share of the Hospital Corporation of America, the for-profit hospital chain founded by his father and his brother."
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