Today's Washington Post features this interesting front page article on the rise and fall of Senator Bill Frist. A rare piece that actually captures the nuance of the predicament in which the Senate Majority Leader currently finds himself, Charles Babington and Helen Dewar's article is a definite must read on this Sunday morning.

There was a time at which Bill Frist was viewed as the future of the Republican Party; a handsome former heart surgeon, Frist had ascended the latter of American politics in only eight short years. After becoming Majority Leader in December 2002 with the fall of Trent Lott, "supporters openly speculated that Frist would run for president in 2008."

"Despite an obviously steep learning curve as he settled into his job, Frist helped rack up substantial GOP victories in 2003, including Bush's third major tax cut, the Medicare drug benefit bill, a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortions, and other initiatives that appealed especially to conservatives."

Things changed quickly however as the leader's luck quickly ran out. Without President Bush's relatively high approval ratings in the lead up to the War in Iraq to buttress him, Senator Frist found it increasingly difficult to govern with a slim majority. As Babington and Dewar write, "he has never steeped himself in the Senate's intricate rules and traditions, robbing him of advantages enjoyed by most of his predecessors, including Republicans Trent Lott (Miss.) and Robert J. Dole (Kan.)."

Lacking the important institutional knowledge that so aided Lott, Dole, and especially Robert Byrd, Frist soon found that he could not control his Senate. When time came to try to pass a Class Action Lawsuit reform bill (which had been assured of 62 votes, thus making it filibuster proof), Frist was surprisingly able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by fundamentally not understanding the ways of the Senate. "Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), another Democrat who supported the class-action bill, said the whole episode reminded him of a 'TV reality show on a dysfunctional family.' Lott said: 'I'm still not sure how we managed not to get the class-action [bill] done'" (italics added).

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This is not the first time that the press has recently decried the abhorrent lack of ability possessed by the Majority Leader. Three weeks ago Bob Novak wrote on the same topic (I write about Novak's piece here), and when Novak starts attacking a Republican, you know things are amiss in the GOP.

Last month, I wrote that it was imperative for Frist to loose his position as Majority Leader as he has poisoned the Senate in only a year and a half as its leader; this Babington/Dewar article has made me look at Frist's leadership in an entirely new way however.

The Washington Post reporters portray Frist as critically inept at running the Senate, and especially the Senate Republicans. With Tom Daschle, and especially Harry Reid, effectively keeping the Democrats in line over the last few months and scoring a number of strategic victories over the Republicans, it appears to me as though it might be better for the Republicans to have ineffective leadership.

With First at their helm, it will be extremely difficult for the Republicans to pass any major legislation before they turn over control of the Senate to the Democrats in January, and this is surely a good thing. Moreover, without a budget or any other significant legislation passed before November, I'm not sure how Bush and the Republican leadership of the House will be able to convince the American people that they deserve to lead the country in the coming years. As a result, maybe it is better for progressives if Frist is the senate leader in the coming months.