When a near-apoplectic Majority Leader Bill Frist denounced Minority Leader Harry Reid for not giving him notice that he intended to demand the Senate go into closed session, it turns out there was a bit of interesting history there — history that it took a newspaper to uncover.
To hear Frist tell it, Reid’s move was shocking and had violated a gentlemen’s agreement. In other words, if Reid had only TOLD HIM he wanted it, they could have gotten together and worked it out.
But, no, it now turns out that Frist had been approached about something like this before under former Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who approached him…but Frist didn’t bother to give him an answer.
The Washington Post reports:
But Reid did not have to start from scratch. His predecessor, former Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), had considered going into closed session to discuss intelligence use and to spur the inquiry launched in early 2004. But he wanted the cooperation of Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
“For the past couple of years, Senator Frist and I had agreed to hold an executive session,” Daschle said yesterday. But Frist “kept putting it off.” Daschle said several Democratic senators “threatened to do it over his opposition during that time, but it never got to that point.”
Daschle’s staff researched exactly how Rule 21 might be used, aides said, and its findings were at Reid’s fingertips when he convened the weekly meeting of his leadership team at 6:15 p.m. Monday. Present were party Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), conference Secretary Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and campaign committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.). In an interview yesterday, Schumer said the group decided on the closed session out of frustration over the Bush administration’s “stonewalling” and their anger over the White House’s failure to apologize after senior aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted Friday on perjury charges connected to claims that prewar intelligence on Iraq was manipulated.
This is yet one more indication of Frist’s inept performance as Majority Leader. Majority Leaders are generally towering political figures who can twist members of their own party’s arms, outfox the opposition, and present a strong, professional public face on their office.
Increasingly, Frist’s public image has become of someone seemingly standing up tall and holding his licked-finger to the political winds — or standing before a microphone upset because he was surprisingly outmanuevered by moderates or his Democratic counterpart.
A Bush favorite dropped into the Majority Leader’s slot after Trent Lott’s foot-in-mouth disease proved terminal, Frist is increasingly looking more like a Michael Brown than a George Mitchell.
What does this episode suggest? Far from being so terribly shocked at the idea that Democrats had wanted this kind of meeting enough to just go ahead and invoke the Senate rule, Frist had earlier been approached by the then-Democratic Senate leader and had simply put him off.
It was mere happenstance, of course, that Daschle wasn’t around to follow up on his demand or anything else involving Frist.
Well, not really, because Frist went into Daschle’s home state and in what was WIDELY noted a highly unusual violation of the gentlemen’s agreement in the Senate between opposing political leaders, campaigned successfully for Daschle’s defeat.
So, it now turns out, Dr. Frist should not have been totally shocked by Reid’s “affront” — since Reid was basically demanding the same meeting Daschle had more politely asked for….to no avail.