Frist is probably a pretty good doctor, but as a presidential candidate he is a cipher. Lacks the common touch, as does Hillary. Bet the next president will be someone else.

Posted by: exguru at August 1, 2005 07:26 AM | Permalink to this comment

B.D. will be pulling for John McCain? I have come to find the conservative conventional wisdom -- that McCain is a grandstanding publicity hound with little respect for principle and still less capacity for appreciating long-term consequences -- fairly convincing. Can you make the case why McCain is better than this?

Posted by: sammler at August 1, 2005 09:34 AM | Permalink to this comment

Frist isn't wrestling with his conscience. He's simply looking out for his family's (and his own) financial interests. There's tons of money to be made off of stem-cell research, and you can bet your tax refund that the Frist Family's medical corporations will have their snouts in the trough.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at August 1, 2005 12:21 PM | Permalink to this comment

Well Gregory you have done it. I thought you were intellectually interesting. But John McCain? That man is ethically deaf and needs laws to obey so that he might have the appearance of ethics. And I suspect this might apply to you. SO what draconian, anti-free speech laws would you have enact so that you too can pretend to be eithical.

Cordially,

A former fan

Posted by: David at August 1, 2005 01:31 PM | Permalink to this comment

This probably isn't the place to get into the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination race. For what it's worth from one 2000 McCain supporter I don't think Frist is a likely nominee and don't believe McCain will ever be accepted by the people essential to Bush's career in national politics: the organized interest groups whose fundraising McCain has attacked, and the interests enriched by Bush's tax cuts that McCain opposed.

About the Frist story, the reason this has been on the front pages has nothing to do with Frist. Journalists and commentators overwhelmingly favor stem-cell research, some for good reasons and many because they have bought into dubious claims that this research holds the key to miracle cures. If someone like Sens. Durbin or Feingold with a record for favoring funding for this research had announced he was having second thoughts, we would be reading two sentences about it in the "News-in-Brief" section on page A22.

Having said that, and speaking only from a tactical point of view, if I do favor federal stem cell funding I draft a bill that meets a few of the White House's objections and pass that. Maybe it gets vetoed, maybe not, but if you have a President in his fifth year who has never vetoed a bill you obviously call him.

Posted by: JEB at August 1, 2005 04:04 PM | Permalink to this comment

I don't have much to say on stem cells but I'm interested in 2008 speculation. I'll even throw out some names!

Republicans: Jeb Bush, Bill Frist, Colin Powell, Tom Ridge and one or two governors I haven't heard of.

Democrats: Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Hillary (unfortunately), and my choice: Jon Stewart (ok, just kidding but would love to see him in the debates).

Posted by: POTUS B at August 1, 2005 04:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

I guess it is my turn to be the boring voice saying you don't have to be a Dobsonite to have reservations about ESC. Please stop pretending they are your only opposition.

Posted by: anomdebus at August 1, 2005 08:27 PM | Permalink to this comment

Wow. “To hell with the Dobsonites and their reactionary ilk.” How offensive to put all who find ESC research something of a slippery Singerian (as in Peter) slope in the same knuckle-dragging camp. There really is some intelligent opposition -- like Andrew Sullivan:

"There is a very clear principle here: do you take life to save lives? My conviction is that you don't, and that the human life in embryonic form is still human life. The idea of cloning embryos to experiment on them is morally repugnant; equally, using left-over, frozen embryos for the same purpose is using human beings as means, not ends. If that isn't a clear, moral line, then I don't know what is. My own religious faith in the dignity of human life is not necessary to support this argument, whatever the NYT says. We're all humans; whatever we believe about our origins or destiny, we can all agree that each of us deserves to be treated as ends in ourselves, not material for others' benefit. If we cede that principle, then we will slide (and have already slid) toward hideous forms of eugenics. Now I know many people disagree. But the pragmatic arguments they deploy - these embryos will be destroyed or kept in limbo anyway, they're teensy-weensy - don't circumvent the deeper moral issue. The only logical justification is an entirely utilitarian one, in which the use of "lesser" humans for the benefit of more developed ones is justified. But this begs an important question: in our society, there is no fundamental moral consensus any more, especially on contentious issues like these. Under those circumstances, it seems to me that the government should remain as neutral as possible between moral claims. The NYT interprets neutrality as funding embryonic stem cell research. That's a funny form of neutrality. In this case, the president has carved out a policy that is, indeed, about as neutral as it could be. If the private sector wants to pursue this course, it can; if individual states want to, ditto. But no American taxpayer should be required to fund from her own dollars what she regards as a moral outrage. Keep the feds out of it. Let the states and private sector do as they will."

Posted by: m.g. at August 1, 2005 09:29 PM | Permalink to this comment

Well, I support McCain because, as far as I can tell, he actually is trying to take on the morass that is our current state of campaign finance, which I think is the root cause of a lot of our problems (along with our exclusionary two-party system). I think if you just look at the tax code or our trade policies, there's a lot of junk there due to influence peddling/rent-seeking/whatever you want to call it.

McCain-Feingold was necessarily flawed because it doesn't fundamentally change the system, but was a band-aid on the current system (politicians got into office by mastering the current system and don't want too many changes, after all and laws don't get passed without the support of politicians). But if it hadn't passed, we'd have lost all the visibility that we had in the 2004 election. Remember, all the money that went into 527s used to go directly to the parties under the radar.

Posted by: fling93 at August 1, 2005 10:02 PM | Permalink to this comment

Er, hopefully this was obvious, but I meant the money being under the radar, not the parties. :)

Posted by: fling93 at August 2, 2005 12:44 AM | Permalink to this comment

Frist has an untenable position as majority leader and presidential candidate. With the exception of Schiavo I think that he has done as good as his limited personality allows. That said I can not support the current position re embryonic stem cell research. In cases where there is no clear line of demarcation possible between the acceptable and unacceptable, or even agreement on the principles, to error on the side of caution is prudent. We have collectively neither the moral stature nor the intelligence to safely allow the creation of life no matter how rudimentary for harvesting.

Posted by: gsbaker at August 2, 2005 02:38 AM | Permalink to this comment

Favor ESC research? Let's use Belgravia Dispatch's children then.

Posted by: Tim at August 2, 2005 05:33 AM | Permalink to this comment

Interesting debate. I'll throw my 2 cents worth in here. The "pro-life" contingent seem to oppose such research on the basis of that a foetus has the potential for life and therefore should be regarded as being a human.

I don't quite agree with this assetion even though it as times makes me uncomfortable to do so. My reason for this is that if we make such assumptions then to take this to nth degree then technically every man who masturbates is guilty of taking potential lives, as are women on a monthly basis.

Perhaps because I grew up on a farm I have a more shall we say callous approach to life. I tend to think in terms of could that life exist outside the womb? Its not an easy place to draw a line. Afterall while medical science can save premature babies born as early as 22-23 weeks - they are still very much fully formed. At the same time Stem Cell reseach offers some fantastic opportunities to combat all sorts of diseases. Where do we draw the line? Do we farm embryo's in laboratories for the specific purposes of research, knowing full well that although they have the potential for life, they could never have it? Would that sacrifice be worth it?

Do umbilical stem cells offer an alternative? (I think they do in some cases but not all - but knowledge is too ignorant to say for sure - but I certainly wish someone had kept mine!)

Even as someone who doesn't hold to the potential of life argument this is not an easy question for me - in some respects "pro-lifers" have a much easier stance to take. This is a truly difficult argument and one I think will ultimately be resolved by the end result - and those willing to take the perhaps less than ethical path and do the research anyway - and there will be those...

Posted by: Aran Brown at August 4, 2005 07:30 AM | Permalink to this comment

As has been said: "There's tons of money to be made off of stem-cell research", especially if it is federally funded. It is that latter point that is the crux of the issue. I just don't see that the Federal Gov't has any obligation to fund that research with taxpayer money (but then, why else was pork invented?).

Posted by: Tamquam Leo Rugiens at August 4, 2005 09:01 PM | Permalink to this comment