You wont hear about this in the media today, or ever.
When insider-trading allegations against former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist surfaced back in 2005, they were splashed on the pages of major newspapers from coast to coast. Now that Dr. Frist has been vindicated, the silence is instructive. Is anybody out there?
Senator Frist was alleged to have received an insider tip and then sold shares in a hospital company run by members of his family. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department investigated for 18 months, and last week the SEC announced that it had closed its probe without taking action -- that is, the doctor was cleared. Thanks in part to his meticulous email archives, Dr. Frist was able to show that he had begun the process of selling his HCA stock in April of 2005, months before he was alleged to have received the inside whispers.
The controversy surrounding his involvement in health care was a perennial bugaboo for Dr. Frist. For years he was harassed by such liberal lobbies as Public Citizen, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which alleged conflicts of interest. These groups objected even to those stocks he held in the blind trust he had created to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Yet when he sold those stocks, with a possible eye on higher office, he was pilloried for doing what the ethicists had asked him to do all along.
Today, even this muted absolution is surely a relief to Dr. Frist. Yet it's impossible to undo the damage to his political career. Despite flimsy evidence, the media storm cast a shadow over his office, derailing any thought of a Presidential bid this year. The Nashville heart surgeon chose instead to "take a sabbatical from public life."
Democrats naturally cared less about the actual facts than about pinning another scandal on Congressional Republicans in the run-up to the fall elections. But what about others who thought it clever or funny or perhaps mandatory to get their share of media attention by confusing accusation with proof of wrongdoing?
American University Professor James Thurber got his name in the paper for quipping that Senator Frist "came in like Jimmy Stewart and was leaving like Martha Stewart." What a card. As for the press corps, it ran off in a braying stampede in pursuit of the theme du jour, which was Abramoff-DeLay-GOP corruption. The accusations against Dr. Frist fit that template, so there was no need for the herd of independent minds to inspect the evidence and make distinctions. A Washington Post editorial from the day now looks especially embarrassing -- and unfair.
As a medical professional with strong Tennessee roots, Bill Frist was the kind of person we'd hope would occasionally choose to participate in politics, as opposed to the permanent political class that now dominates Congress. That his previous engagement in the real world, even carefully and transparently managed, made him an unfair target of political attacks shows why so few people of accomplishment run for office. These are the kind of people that the goo-goo Naderites and their media acolytes end up driving from public life.
Dr. Frist now joins a long line of public servants to be smeared on page one and exonerated next to the classifieds, only to wonder if anyone noticed. As former U.S. Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan asked after his legal ordeal, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"
When insider-trading allegations against former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist surfaced back in 2005, they were splashed on the pages of major newspapers from coast to coast. Now that Dr. Frist has been vindicated, the silence is instructive. Is anybody out there?
Senator Frist was alleged to have received an insider tip and then sold shares in a hospital company run by members of his family. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department investigated for 18 months, and last week the SEC announced that it had closed its probe without taking action -- that is, the doctor was cleared. Thanks in part to his meticulous email archives, Dr. Frist was able to show that he had begun the process of selling his HCA stock in April of 2005, months before he was alleged to have received the inside whispers.
The controversy surrounding his involvement in health care was a perennial bugaboo for Dr. Frist. For years he was harassed by such liberal lobbies as Public Citizen, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which alleged conflicts of interest. These groups objected even to those stocks he held in the blind trust he had created to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Yet when he sold those stocks, with a possible eye on higher office, he was pilloried for doing what the ethicists had asked him to do all along.
Today, even this muted absolution is surely a relief to Dr. Frist. Yet it's impossible to undo the damage to his political career. Despite flimsy evidence, the media storm cast a shadow over his office, derailing any thought of a Presidential bid this year. The Nashville heart surgeon chose instead to "take a sabbatical from public life."
Democrats naturally cared less about the actual facts than about pinning another scandal on Congressional Republicans in the run-up to the fall elections. But what about others who thought it clever or funny or perhaps mandatory to get their share of media attention by confusing accusation with proof of wrongdoing?
American University Professor James Thurber got his name in the paper for quipping that Senator Frist "came in like Jimmy Stewart and was leaving like Martha Stewart." What a card. As for the press corps, it ran off in a braying stampede in pursuit of the theme du jour, which was Abramoff-DeLay-GOP corruption. The accusations against Dr. Frist fit that template, so there was no need for the herd of independent minds to inspect the evidence and make distinctions. A Washington Post editorial from the day now looks especially embarrassing -- and unfair.
As a medical professional with strong Tennessee roots, Bill Frist was the kind of person we'd hope would occasionally choose to participate in politics, as opposed to the permanent political class that now dominates Congress. That his previous engagement in the real world, even carefully and transparently managed, made him an unfair target of political attacks shows why so few people of accomplishment run for office. These are the kind of people that the goo-goo Naderites and their media acolytes end up driving from public life.
Dr. Frist now joins a long line of public servants to be smeared on page one and exonerated next to the classifieds, only to wonder if anyone noticed. As former U.S. Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan asked after his legal ordeal, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"
