Washington, D.C. ? Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Wednesday he will not run for president in 2008, a high-profile campaign dropout more than a year before the first convention delegates are chosen.

“In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close,” said the Tennessee Republican, a surgeon before he entered politics in 1994.

He said he “will take a sabbatical from public life” and “return to my professional roots as a healer and to refocus my creative energies on innovative solutions to seemingly insurmountable challenges Americans face.”

Frist announced when he first ran for the Senate that he would retire after two terms. His decision not to seek the White House thus caps a 12-year stint in electoral politics in which he rose from an underdog in his 1994 Senate campaign to the position of majority leader a mere eight years later.

Among the Republicans already exploring a White House bid are Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Other potential GOP contenders include Sens. Sam Brownback, of Kansas, and Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska; Govs. George Pataki, of New York, and Mike Huckabee, of Arkansas; and Rep. Duncan Hunter, of California.