I’m not the only one to notice that Bill Frist is squandering his medical credibility:

These days he seems not so much the leader of the Senate conservatives, but someone who is playing the role. And because he is behaving in ways that don’t seem entirely authentic, he is often trying just a bit too hard, striking the notes more forcefully than they need to be struck.

That is what happened during the Terri Schiavo affair. It’s not quite fair to say that Frist diagnosed Schiavo from a TV screen, but he did put himself on the wrong side of the autopsy that came out last week. He did betray his medical training, which is the core of his being, to please a key constituency group.