Wall Street Journal applauds Presbyterian senator-surgeon
The Layman Online, July 26, 2001
While U.S. Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) was “dissembling and ducking,” The Wall Street Journal said, there was a better example of how a member of Congress ought to serve.
In a July 26 column titled “Senator, Surgeon and Samaritan,” Albert R. Hunt pointed to U.S. Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
Photo from Bill Frist’s U.S. Senate Web site Frist, one of the world’s leading heart-lung transplant surgeons, is a member of the 1,900-member Westminster Presbyterian Church in Nashville.
He recently spent the July 4 congressional recess in war-torn southern Sudan lancing boils and doing surgery in a makeshift operating room with no electricity or running water.
“This was no government junket; he was there on his own dollar, under the auspices of Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina relief agency,” Hunt wrote. Samaritan’s Purse is an evangelical world relief ministry founded and operated by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham.
Frist previously made medical mission trips to Kenya and Uganda and is considered one of Congress’ leading authorities on how U.S. policy toward African nations should be shaped.
He also treats poor people at free health-care clinics in Washington while Congress is in session. He is close to President George W. Bush and has his ear on a number issues, including Africa, health care, faith-based initiatives and budgeting.
“There is considerable speculation about Dr. Frist’s political future,” Hunt wrote. “He plans to leave the Senate in 2006 after two terms. Already, party insiders consider him a frontrunner to replace Dick Cheney on a 2004 national ticket.”
Frist is one of the most highly respected political leaders in Tennessee. He became the first practicing physician elected to Congress since 1928 when, in 1994, he defeated a three-term Democrat by 14 points. Last November, he was re-elected by what is believed to be the widest statewide margin in the history of Tennessee.
A graduate of Princeton University, where he specialized in health-care policy, and Harvard Medical School, Frist founded and became director of the internationally renowned Vanderbuilt University Transplant Center.
Hunt began his column about Frist with a reference to “the sorry spectacle of Rep. Gary Condit.” He concluded: “The next time someone laments that we don’t get our best people in politics, tell them where Dr. Frist was on this past July 4.”