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Appeasing the Opinionmakers
R. Alex Whitlock
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has apparently
reversed course on Stem Cell research:
Mr. Frist, a heart-lung transplant surgeon who said last month that he did not back expanding financing "at this juncture," is expected to announce his decision Friday morning in a lengthy Senate speech. In it, he says that while he has reservations about altering Mr. Bush's four-year-old policy, which placed strict limits on taxpayer financing for the work, he supports the bill nonetheless.
"While human embryonic stem cell research is still at a very early stage, the limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases," Mr. Frist says, according to a text of the speech provided by his office Thursday evening. "Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified."
Mr. Frist's move will undoubtedly change the political landscape in the debate over embryonic stem cell research, one of the thorniest moral issues to come before Congress. The chief House sponsor of the bill, Representative Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware, said, "His support is of huge significance."
The stem cell bill has passed the House but is stalled in the Senate, where competing measures are also under consideration. Because Mr. Frist's colleagues look to him for advice on medical matters, his support for the bill could break the Senate logjam. It could also give undecided Republicans political license to back the legislation, which is already close to having the votes it needs to pass the Senate.
Funding for Stem Cell research is a complicated issue, morally speaking. A distressing many the right and the left have their moral authority all sewn up and believe that those who disagree are troglodytes or Death Culture cultists. But for those of us not married to the notion that science-in-the-name-of-anything-is-good or to the notion that an embryo is a human life, it's tough.
So in that vein, I don't have a problem with Frist changing his views on the subject. The big question is "Why?" and, believe it or not, crass political bean-counting is not what I'm afraid of.
Though I voted for him twice and approve of the job he's done, I have my problems with President Bush. I have a lot of problems with some of the policies he's enacted, but politics is about compromise. But one thing that I have always respected about the President, and the one thing that I'm going to be on the lookout in the 2008 primaries, is that President Bush does not care what the editorial board of the New York Times thinks about him.
That is not a small thing. Politics is about ego and part of ego is being loved. Watergate aside, President Nixon nearly ran this country into the ground to please the elite opinionmakers. My main issue with John McCain is that he cares what they think. Though President Bush's obstinance can be a bad thing, it has prevented him from ever caving in before the fight has even begun so as not to be considered too "right wing" and "dogmatic" by The Really Important People.
This is what I'm looking at in 2008. If Bill Frist starts to seem like the kind of guy who is worried about Opinions From On High, he will be really difficult to please. Not only because it will lead to policy decisions that I don't like, but because it will be unsuccessful. It is difficult for me to imagine a distance leftward where the New York Times Editorial Board will be satisfied just as no Democrat can move enough to the right to win James Dobson's support. Secondly, and more importantly, the Upper East Side is no more America than is Wichita, Kansas. Both parties are closer to the electoral mainstream than they are.
I have to agree with James Joyner that it's looking increasingly
less like Frist will be the nominee. He hasn't the personality, nor the base. But he has been a good party-builder and did the GOP well in the 2002 elections. And I am generally very comfortable with him. But I'm growing slightly less so.
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Observations
I don't think President Bush's lack of concern regarding the opinion of NYT editors is solely an exercise of sticking to his guns on what he thinks is right; I think he has a firm distaste for all media that is rooted in the memory of what happened with his father's campaign press. Can't say that I blame him, really, but it does make him appear more obstinate than is generally necessary for showing character and fortitude.
Whether you are right or I am depends on our perceptions of two things:
1) Whether Bush is correct in taking the position that he is taking. All of us are more sympathetic to the moral rectitude of positions with which we agree. Arguing that Bush is doing the right thing (whatever position he is taking) for the wrong reason (to spite the media) is not one many are inclined to pro-actively take (true though it may be).
2) Whether he is consistently taking positions that defy the media. If the media is driving his behavior, this would have to be true. I don't particularly think that it is. He's done the NYT-correct thing in terms of foreign aid, for instance, despite a media that gives little or no acknowledgment of that. He signed on to campaign finance reform, which is also endorsed by all the Right Minds.
It is worth conceding, however, that ignoring the NYT is not necessarily always the right thing to do. Though I disagree with them regularly, they are generally bright folks and it would do to listen to your opponents because you could, in fact, be wrong. On the other hand, that's an idea stuck in the lofts of my view of the way things should be. As you point out, Bush has learned what happens when someone gives too much ground to those that don't honestly want them to succeed.
"Watergate aside, President Nixon nearly ran this country into the ground to please the elite opinionmakers."
I think that's an extremely difficult opinion to reconcile with the actual history of Nixon's violent hatred of "the elite opinionmakers."
It's not uncommon to hate those whose approval you actively seek and are repeatedly denied. Even as you continue to seek approval.
Nixon wanted to be loved, and the fact that he never was (even by his supporters, but especially by the media) helped drive him off the deep end.
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