THE NEW PARTNERSHIP of George W. Bush and Bill Frist is well positioned to boost the neglected softer side of the Republican agenda.
President Bush, who campaigned as a compassionate conservative in 2000, has mostly failed to translate that slogan into policy so far.
A balky Congress has been partly to blame. But the president also lost his focus on domestic issues after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
His core Republican voters got a hefty tax cut, and an education bill went through without enough money to pay for it. But that has been about it.
With his 2004 re-election race looming, Mr. Bush is certain to reach out again to moderates. Mr. Frist, the incoming Senate majority leader, should take advantage of the opportunity to make good on his own promise to "improve the lives of others."
Mr. Frist, the Senate's only physician, has already made it clear that his top priority will be health care legislation - a costly but critical issue long neglected in Washington because of difficulty in reaching consensus.
He promised to address prescription drugs for the elderly, as well as the thornier problem of providing health insurance for the 38 million Americans without it.
Success on either of those fronts would be a major achievement. But the GOP team must be willing to craft solutions far beyond old market-based proposals that rely too heavily on an industry unwilling to serve the high-risk populations most in need.
The new Senate Republican leader can also help reduce the health insurance burden by attacking drug prices. Doing so would require Sen. Frist to take on the pharmaceutical industry, a major contributor to his campaigns and one of the most influential lobbies in Congress.
But no one is better qualified than he to correct a system in which Americans are charged top dollar for drugs that are developed with federal research money and protected by generous federal patents.
Tending to the economy is likely to be the first order of business for the new team, if only because the last Congress failed to agree on a budget for this year.
President Bush thus has the perfect chance to overrule his budget director and side with House Republican moderates eager for him to fully finance his education commitment to "leave no child behind." Local school systems have been given new standards to meet with only about three-quarters of the money needed to do it.
Tom DeLay, the new House majority leader, is a far more doctrinaire conservative than either President Bush or Mr. Frist. But instead of pushing a right-wing agenda, Mr. DeLay is expected to use his new power to reward the well-heeled special interests that underwrite his political operations.
That's exactly the kind of politics the president and Mr. Frist must avoid. If Republicans are truly to put forward a more compassionate face, they can't simply allow campaign cash to rule.