Off the Agenda?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is clearly smarting after setbacks that prevented him from going nuclear over the judicial filibuster and getting a quick vote for John Bolton. Add to those failures his previous missteps on the Schiavo case and his ill-fated appearance on "Justice Sunday", and you might say his tone is a bit defensive here:

"The short-term evaluations, I believe, will prove to be shortsighted and wrong after we get judge after judge after judge after judge through, plus at least one Supreme Court nominee and an energy bill," Dr. Frist said after a lecture at Harvard, where he received his own medical education. "And we will get Bolton."

We will soon see if Frist can deliver on these promises, but there is one interesting thing to note about this laundry list of future accomplishments — passing legislation to overhaul Social Security isn't on it.

Now, this may be an oversight on his part, but if I were Frist right now, I'd focus on things that might be doable. I wouldn't blame him a bit for quietly dropping Social Security from his agenda — Bush's "plan" is a loser for sure.