FRIST AID: First of all, that pun stinks. Memo to journalists: don’t use it again!

More seriously, I’ve been interested to see how much attention the story of Bill Frist’s roadside rescue, which I mentioned yesterday, has gotten. Two quick points:

First, the fact that he administered first aid and may have helped some people has, basically, nothing to do with his ability to serve as a Senator, much less Majority Leader — except, perhaps, that it will make it hard to demonize him as Ebenezer Scrooge returned from the grave, which is the reflexive way Dems treat Republicans. Sorry, new playbook needed guys.

Second, while Frist acquitted himself well, there were (according to a CNN press conference I saw) six other people, including a nurse and a paramedic, who also stopped to help. It seems that some of them even had some medical equipment in their trunks.

The real lesson here is the “pack not a herd” lesson. Official help was nearly a half-hour away, but people with skills and dedication spontaneously organized themselves to do what they could. If we did what I’ve recommended more than once, here and elsewhere, this sort of thing would happen more often, and more effectively, in a variety of settings.

UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Guest observes: “The reason Frist’s roadside assistance is newsworthy is that he’s a Senator. Journalists know that most senators are such self absorbed pussies that they’d never think of diving into a situation like that. They’d just wring their hands and go back and pass a law.” Well, to be fair, that’s only if there were no cameras around.

A huge number of other readers emailed, rather unfairly, that John Edwards would have stopped to help by offering to sue Isuzu or Firestone on the victims’ behalf. I believe they may have been inspired by this item — which is, after all, satire.

UPDATE: Here’s the Spoons take on how media coverage ought to be done. But you won’t see stories like this until closer to the next election.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here’s an email defending John Edwards, from one of my former students:

I’ve gone on to be an insurance defense lawyer in Raleigh (putting to work all I learned in your torts class). My firm had a lot of cases with John Edwards when he was still practicing, and continues to do so with his former partner, David Kirby.

I’m not sure I’m what I think of Edwards as a presidential candidate, or whether I’d vote for him, but I wanted to say something in his defense based on the “huge number” of e-mails you’ve gotten from people saying that Edwards would have offered to sue Isuzu and Firestone if he had been faced with Frist’s situation.

Edwards was, in fact, confronted with a similar situation. In 1996, his own teenage son was killed in an accident when his Grand Cherokee rolled over. Edwards did not sue Jeep or whoever the tire manufacturer was. I know that most of the people who thought they were being funny when they sent those e-mails didn’t know about Edwards’s son, but the jokes become somewhat inappropriate when you know his history.

Well, I didn’t, but I do now. And so do they. Here’s a link to an article on the subject, too. And this is worth reading, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The New Republic thinks it knows why Edwards is running.