To quote my introduction,
Lamar Alexander is one of these golden children: Eagle Scout; president of his high-school class; governor of Boys State; editor of the college newspaper; Phi Beta Kappa; governor, which is to say real governor; university president; cabinet member; U.S. senator; presidential candidate.
The presidency, by my calculation, is the only thing that ever eluded Mr. Alexander.
He is a Republican. At the outset of our conversation, I suggest to him that he could not get anywhere in GOP politics today. His credentials and abilities would work against him. “Am I cynical or realistic?”
“I hope you’re not realistic,” Alexander says.
He has written his memoirs: The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump.
Alexander is a seventh-generation Tennessean, a native of a mountain district that was Lincolnite. It was a Union area. When asked about his politics, Alexander’s great-grandfather would say, “I’m a Republican. I fought with the Union, and I vote like I shot.”
Today, you can see Confederate flags in that district, as you can in my home state of Michigan—including way up north, in the Upper Peninsula. Curious phenomenon. In our podcast, Alexander and I discuss it a bit.
His parents were teachers and public-spirited. When Lamar was ten, his father took him to the courthouse to meet Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr.—father of the future senator (and majority leader). “I was sure that I had just met the most respected man I was ever likely to meet,” says Alexander, “other than my dad and the preacher. I was raised to respect public service.”
Alexander went to Vanderbilt and then to New York University Law School. It was quite a switch, living in Greenwich Village. Alexander has had a broad experience.
In the Nixon White House, he worked under Bryce Harlow, the legendary staffer and adviser. (Harlow had advised Eisenhower previously.) He is known by some of us for a particular saying: “Trust is the coin of the realm in Washington, D.C.”
Says Alexander,
What I mostly remember about him is his wisdom and ethical attitude. At 29 years old, I sat 50 feet from the Oval Office at a desk crammed up next to his. I listened to his telephone conversations and saw other White House aides come in with difficult issues. The question he asked more often than not was, “What would be the right thing to do?,” and for many of them, that would clear up what they ought to do.
I got my Ph.D. in politics and government from that remarkable person.
Alexander also worked for Howard Baker (Jr.). I have an easy question: Would he have made a good president?
Here is Alexander’s answer (and I will lightly paraphrase, as is my custom in these articles):
In my opinion, the most important attributes of a president are character and temperament. And it would help if the president were very broad-gauge—if he had had a broad-gauge life.
Then, I would hope the president leaned right, because I’m a conservative, but I’d rather have one with superior character and temperament, someone I could introduce my grandson to, someone about whom I could say to my grandson, “I hope you grow up to be like him.”
Howard Baker was that kind of person.
In our Q&A, we talk about Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Reagan. We talk about the difference between being a governor and being a senator. (Alexander is well positioned to discuss this issue.) We talk about education policy. (Same. Alexander was education secretary under Bush 41.) We talk about running for president.
I ask him something cheesy, and something important—something along the lines of “Will our democracy survive?” Sure it will, he says. But then he holds up his smartphone: This is a problem, our “digital democracy,” which does a great job of setting people at enmity, driving them into little tribes.
One of the people Alexander has most admired is John Minor Wisdom, the appeals-court judge, one of the “Fifth Circuit Four.” Young Alexander worked for him, down in New Orleans, where the court is based. The “four” were instrumental in the advancement of civil rights.
In addition to his legal duties, Alexander played at Your Father’s Moustache, a bar and nightclub on Bourbon Street. Alexander plays the piano and the trombone.
During one of my campaigns, a reporter said, “Mr. Alexander grew up in a lower-middle–class family in the mountains of Tennessee,” where I live today, and my mother—I talked to her that weekend, and she was reading Thessalonians to gather strength for how to deal with this slur on the family.
She said, “Son, we never thought of ourselves that way. You had a piano lesson from the day you were three and a library card from the day you were four. You had everything you needed that was important.”
What a joy, to speak with Lamar Alexander. As I say at the end of our podcast, I wish I could go out and vote for him today.
