A Heart to Serve

by Bill Frist

  In other cases, we faced the diplomatic challenge of convincing a would-be candidate that he or she was not the best choice. There is a lot of ego in politics. For instance, in New Hampshire, we had a sitting senator who we knew could not win the upcoming election. My colleague and friend, Bob Smith, had served in the Senate since 1990; then in January 1999, he launched a whimsical campaign for president. When it appeared certain that George W. Bush would be the nominee, Bob announced that he was leaving the Republican Party to run for president on the Taxpayer’s Party ticket. Finally, after dropping out of the race and supporting George Bush, Smith recanted his repudiation of the Republican Party, saying that he’d never really changed his voter’s registration. He still had two years to go on his Senate term, but the damage had been done. It wasn’t that Bob Smith was not a good man, but he had diminished the respect the people of New Hampshire had for him and it had become impossible for him to win re-election.

  To replace Smith, our NRSC team quietly leaned toward John Sununu, a thoughtful young congressman whose father had served as White House chief of staff under President George H. W. Bush. John wanted to do it, but taking on an incumbent senator from the same party is a big hill to climb. John hedged and hesitated until Mitch Bainwol finally forced the issue. “Look me in the eye,” Mitch said, “and tell me you’re going to run, because if you’re not, don’t kill us.” If the NRSC had supported Sununu and he later pulled out, our credibility would have been severely damaged. Sununu ran and won, serving the people of New Hampshire with distinction for the next six years. Bob Smith stepped aside and eventually moved to Sarasota, Florida, to sell real estate. (In 2004, he flirted with another run for the Senate and endorsed Democrat John Kerry for president.)

  As for our message, we chose an edgy tone for our television commercials, emphasizing homeland security and spelling out the defining contrasts between our candidates and the opposition. To get the top quality in message delivery, we interviewed twenty advertising production teams before awarding contracts to five to produce our ads. And their services didn’t come cheap: During just the final week of the campaign we spent more than a million dollars per campaign in more than seven states.

  Money, of course, is an essential ingredient in contemporary politics. Our new fundraising strategy for the NRSC was based on the ancient adage, “Go where the money is.” We aggressively pursued donors in places considered Democratic strongholds, most prominently New York City. I started spending part of every other week on the ground there planting the seeds. And New York was responsive. Under the leadership of Linus, who worked closely with the gracious and experienced Linda Pell, and with the help of the majority of my Senate colleagues, we raised more than $120 million for our candidates over the two-year cycle, substantially more than any previous NRSC, and a record that still stands today. This cycle was the last in which nonfederal or so-called “soft money” could be raised and spent. The magnitude of these resources meant the committee was more heavily involved in advertising compared to more recent times. Indeed we spent more than $50 million on advocacy through the five media teams and spent more than candidates did on their own races in some circumstances.

  Throughout the process, Mitch and I had a biweekly breakfast with White House strategist Karl Rove and worked seamlessly with the president’s campaign team. We sought to do things differently than had been done before. For instance, we boldly ran television ads featuring President Bush in at least five states where conventional wisdom said that incumbent Democrats were safe, but where we felt our candidates could wage successful challenges. The ads worked, and indeed we won two seats in those Democratic stronghold states.

  Despite all this groundwork, most political pundits still gave us little chance of winning as the election drew near. But three significant issues showed the Democratic Party in a negative light and helped us enormously.

  First, there was the response to the tragic events of 9/11. In many ways, our nation was still reeling, searching for a renewed sense of security after the massive, brutal act of radical Islamic terrorism on our homeland. Democrats had balked over plans to create a Department of Homeland Security because of concerns over labor union prerogatives, which made their party look weak on national security in the minds of many voters. Americans trust Republicans when it comes to security.

  A second negative grew out of another horrible tragedy. One senator that I and many Republicans admired deeply was Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone, who argued passionately and with conviction for the interests of the common man.

  While Paul was running for re-election, Republican Norm Coleman was running a politically smart race against him and had actually inched ahead. Then, just eleven days before the election, while flying to a campaign event, Paul, his wife and daughter, two pilots, and two campaign staff members died in a plane crash.

  The nationally broadcast memorial service was attended by President Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and many Senate colleagues.

  Karyn and I went to Minnesota for the service. It was held in a huge convention hall, filled with people who had poured in to pay their respects and honor the great man and his family. There was a huge screen in the hall that showed individual attendees in the crowd. As some of the Republican Senate leadership entered the arena and their faces were shown on the screen, many in the auditorium vocally expressed disdain. After moving tributes by his family, as Karyn and I sat high in the stands of the large hall, you could almost feel the mood begin to shift. The Wellstone service quickly took on the tone of a spirited political rally rather than a solemn tribute to a fallen public servant, as speakers urged that voters should “win the election for Paul.” The widely reported booing of Republicans at an hour of grief put many people back on their heels. It didn’t reflect Paul’s legacy. But it happened, and this politicization of a tragic accident backfired, evoking a negative response from a large segment of the American public, including many Minnesotans.

  A third negative image resulted when House Democrats David Bonior and Jim McDermott visited Iraq in 2002 and from Baghdad appeared live on ABC’s This Week with a message that seemed approving of Saddam Hussein, overly critical of President Bush (“The president of the United States will lie to the American people to get us into this war.”) and hostile toward plans for military enforcement of the U.N. mandates concerning Iraq’s possible ownership of weapons of mass destruction. Most Americans were disturbed by this apparent effort to undercut the president at a time of international crisis.

  These three negative images contrasted with the NRSC-driven direction of the Republican Senate campaigns to stress a security-focused, patriotic agenda. And when the dust settled after the 2002 election, we had not only won our most hotly contested races, but also gained a net total of two Senate seats, enough for a fifty-one-vote majority that wrested control of the Senate from the Democrats—the first time since 1913, when the popular election of senators was mandated by the Seventeenth Amendment, that the president’s party had regained majority control of the Senate in a first midterm election.

  Washington has a lot of curious traditions, and one quickly emerged: Since I had participated so vigorously, and successfully, in helping the Republicans reclaim the majority in the Senate, pundits and politicians alike assumed I now had much grander ambitions. A previous majority leader, George Mitchell, had reclaimed the Democratic majority as his party’s campaign chief in 1986 and subsequently took the majority leader’s job in 1988, so many insiders concluded that might happen on our side as well.

  Almost immediately my staff was besieged by individuals wanting to know if that was my plan. I had no desire to be majority leader. Over the years I’d actually told Karyn night after night, as we went to bed and watched the majority leader closing down the Senate for the day on C-SPAN, “That has got to be the worst job in the Senate.” My plans then were exactly the same as when I announced to run for the Senate in 1994: to serve two terms and then return home to Nashville. So when I
turned down another stint as chairman of the NRSC and emphatically stated in an interview before Thanksgiving that I planned to devote my remaining four years in the Senate not to leadership positions but rather legislative issues like Medicare and health care, the soothsayers just jumped to another scenario: They started predicting that my ambitions must be much bigger, that I was planning a presidential bid in 2008. They just couldn’t accept the fact that my mission was not to remain inside the Beltway for the rest of my life, but to make a difference for Tennessee and the country simply as one of fifty-one Republican senators for twelve years.

  Those were my plans—but life, as we all know, has a way of making plans of its own.

  11

  Unexpected Storm

  Cynics will forever be convinced that I became majority leader of the Senate through collusion with President Bush and his advisors. It wasn’t that way, and for those who are fascinated by the “inside baseball” of Capitol Hill, the story reveals the inner workings of our upper legislative body.

  The Senate is a different kind of place. The Founders designed it to be one step removed from the passions of the American people, with each senator serving a relatively long term of six years. It determines its own rules of governance every two years and in fact is run by precedent and tradition more than by rigid rules. The very nature of the Senate caucus is to resist outside influences and forces, even those that might come from the White House. And for leadership selection within the body, the complicated personalities, fierce loyalties, and the deferential respect for the institution and its traditions play a much larger role than outsiders might imagine.

  I’ve always had respect for Trent Lott, and still do. Trent had been good to me since my arrival in Washington. He’d honored many of my committee assignment requests, encouraged my run for the chairmanship of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2000, and cheered me on in my public appearances (as I’m sure he did for all our Republican colleagues). If I appeared on one of the Sunday morning television shows, Trent usually called afterward. “Great job,” he’d tell me, or offer some friendly word of advice about how I could perform better next time.

  Trent was also good at giving responsibility to people on our team, putting them in the game, and then letting them play. For example, when the anthrax scare struck in 2001, Trent called me in to handle the issue—with colleagues, the administration, health professionals, and the public. Similarly, in 1998, Trent chose me to serve on the bipartisan Medicare Commission to make recommendations to President Clinton on reform of our health-care system for seniors. The move made sense, since I was the only physician in the Senate. Nevertheless, the option was Tom Daschle’s and Trent’s, and he invited me to the party, an assignment that I appreciated.

  So by the time my tenure as NRSC chair ended, although Trent and I were not close friends, I felt that we had a strong working relationship. I was looking forward to being a part of our Senate Republican team, now back in the majority, ready to tackle some pretty big issues—especially health care.

  But then a storm hit.

  December 5, 2002, was a snowy Washington evening and the weather made the pre-Christmas mood even more festive as guests crowded into a banquet room in the Dirksen Building to celebrate Strom Thurmond’s one hundredth birthday as the South Carolina senator prepared to retire after forty-eight years of service.

  The atmosphere that evening was relaxed. The hard-fought midterm elections were over, Congress had recessed until January, and with the incoming Republican majority, Trent was set to reclaim his position as majority leader, a role initially bestowed upon him when then–majority leader Bob Dole left the Senate to run for president in 1996.

  The Thurmond birthday event was attended by a wide variety of friends, political colleagues, and prominent members of the news media. It was a celebration and a tribute to a man whose life bridged two centuries, and even those in the room who hadn’t been Strom’s strongest supporters left their differences at the door.

  Bob Dole led off the evening with stories and quips about Strom, cracking up the crowd with his droll, sardonic humor, and ending on a strong note of respectful tribute. Trent followed. He began by speaking kindly of Strom’s longevity, but then it seemed he attempted to outdo Dole, even repeating a joke that Bob had just delivered. Abandoning notes prepared by his press aide (as he later acknowledged), Trent began talking off the cuff. Speaking of his home state, Mississippi, Trent said, “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

  Trent later said repeatedly that he was merely trying to compliment Senator Thurmond. In truth, the off-the-cuff remark was scarcely noticed by most people in the crowd that night, and it was largely ignored by the mainstream media.

  The first small gust blew the next evening. PBS’s program Washington Week centered on topics such as President Bush’s economic team, the Supreme Court’s stand on affirmative action, and concerns over the impending war with Iraq. But at the close of the program, moderator Gwen Ifill introduced a brief segment about Strom Thurmond:

  As we go tonight, we take note of the 100th birthday of the nation’s longest-serving senator, Strom Thurmond. Senator Thurmond has served South Carolina as its Republican senator since 1954. In 1948, he was also the presidential candidate of the segregationist Dixiecrat Party. That career detail brings us to tonight’s little history quiz, something we call “What Was He Thinking?” The “he” in this case, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. He had this to say about his home state at yesterday’s Capitol Hill birthday celebration. 1

  PBS then ran a videotaped excerpt of Trent’s remark at the party the previous evening. In her parting words, Ifill said, “Drop us an e-mail. Tell us what you think Senator Lott meant.”

  With that, the trouble began. Internet users responded not simply to PBS, but in various forums throughout the Web. Suddenly the public connected Trent’s statement to the fact that one of the primary issues on which Strom Thurmond had run for president in 1948 had been the perpetuation of racial segregation—a position he later renounced. When the Washington Post followed up by publishing Trent’s comments, a maelstrom of negative publicity struck Lott, with some denouncing his comment as racist.

  As the storm gathered intensity and speed, Trent attempted to explain his statement in the national media; over the next several days, he apologized at least four times publicly, but his efforts were mostly futile. Some felt Trent was getting a bum rap, that he was merely attempting an innocent compliment to an old friend. Others, however, thought that Trent’s comment dragged out attitudes toward race that should have remained buried.

  The controversy was exactly what the Republicans didn’t need. President Bush and other party leaders had been working hard to dispel the myth that the Democratic Party was the logical home for minorities, emphasizing that the Republican Party had been a true party of inclusion since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Lott’s comment offended not only African Americans, a large percentage of whom were Democrats, but many white Republicans as well.

  At first, it seemed that the flap over Trent’s statement would melt away with the Washington snows, and had it not taken place during a slow news cycle, it might have. But as sometimes happens in politics, the story developed a life of its own. Trent had gone home to Mississippi, then to southern Florida for a vacation, and was essentially out of contact. As the storm gathered fury, telephone lines burned with members calling back and forth, expressing their concern that the leader’s ability to drive the Republican agenda might have been seriously weakened by the incident. Several senators suggested a private, closed-door conference to discuss the issue. While we had just elected Trent as our majority leader right before Thanksgiving, our rules provided that a minimum of five members could request such a conference, calling a special meeting of all fifty-one senators.

 
; It soon became clear that five requests could be gathered within minutes. The question was: To what purpose? If we got everybody together, what would we do?

  As the storm clouds darkened, I talked with Trent several times. In response to a reporter’s question, I said simply, “The statement was unfortunate, and it was off the cuff and casual. I know Trent Lott, and he’s not a racist. It is important that people understand the Republican Party leads on issues of equity and fairness and nondiscrimination. Any implication otherwise would be a disappointment to me.” 2 Karyn and I discussed whether we should go down to Florida to demonstrate our support for Trent, but decided against it, thinking it would draw too much media attention. Many of my fellow senators joined in supporting Trent, and most felt he would weather the storm.

  Many in Washington assumed that the senator who would most likely replace Trent, should he resign or be removed, was Don Nickles, the well-liked and highly respected senior senator from Oklahoma and second-highest-ranking Republican. Strongly conservative—some said even more so than Trent—Don had genuine aspirations to lead the caucus. He’d been in the Senate since 1981 and had served as assistant leader since 1996. It was no secret that he and Trent didn’t always see eye to eye. As the Lott story unfolded, it was easy to imagine Don thinking that his time to step up had finally come. But Don had privately indicated to close associates as early as October 2002 that he planned to leave the Senate at the end of his term. Before the 2002 elections, he had publicly stated that he would not run for majority leader, but would instead serve as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.