Farewell to Bill Frist

Tuesday's election marked the end of the legislative career of U.S. Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee. Frist, a Republican who became Senate Majority Leader following the 2002 elections, choose not to run for another term, perhaps in the hopes of pursuing the presidency in 2008.

Frist's legislative career is the subject of an assessment in the current issue of The American Prospect. The article traces Frist's rapid rise and fall as a legislative leader and asks how a man who stood at the peak of his party's power structure in 2002 so quickly earned the disdain of liberal and conservative activists alike.

"Whether it was in the service of the White House advisers who adopted him as a dauphin to George W. Bush, or as an ill-plunged lunge for the Republican base in an opportunistic bid for a future presidency, Frist almost always did the wrong thing, both as a legislator and as a politician. And this, it seems, has likely ended his career in Republican politics in Washington."