ALEXANDER NEARS END OF LONG PUBLIC CAREER
Republican reflects on Trump, prospects for Biden presidency
N A S H V I L L E , Te n n .
More than four decades ago, Lamar Alexander won a ticket to the governor’s mansion after he walked more than 1,000 miles around Tennessee in a plaid shirt and hiking boots. He spent the night with 73 families and called his campaign headquarters from payphones.
Alexander, who served two terms as the state’s chief executive before heading to Washing ton, is finishing up his third and final U.S. Senate term in a nation increasingly divided by the COVID-19 pandemic, issues of racial injustice and law enforcement, and the vitriolic election season.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, wearing a face mask in the same red-and-black plaid he favored as a young candidate, the 80-year-old Republican lawmaker discussed how he has navigated the presidency of President Donald Trump.
Known as a dealmaker from a more cooperative, bygone era, Alexander has spent his final years, in part, deciding how and whether to react to what Trump is saying, doing and tweeting, without losing a partner in the White House who shares some of his own priorities.
Alexander said many Democrats wish he would
“spend more time criticizing President Trump’s behavior,” while a lot of Republicans wish he “spent more time criticizing President (Barack) Obama’s liberal policies.”
“President Lincoln, if he got mad, he’d write a hot letter and put it in the drawer,” Alexander said. “Today, if the president gets mad, he puts it out on a tweet to 72 million people and they put something out on their tweet. So, this drives a lot of division in the country. The blessings of an Internet democracy — we’re somehow going to find a way to tolerate it and live with it if we want to unify the country and solve big problems in a way most of us can accept.”
The former U.S. education secretary and two-time presidential candidate recently urged Trump’s team to begin the transition with Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, citing the need to
keep coronavirus vaccine distribution plans on track. Even before COVID-19, the Senate health committee chairman pushed back against anti-vaccine disinformation. This summer, he also pressed Trump to wear a mask more often to set an example for his followers.
The attorney and businessman helped draw the auto industry to Tennessee as governor. He served as the University of Tennessee’s president before his 2002 election to the Senate. Tea party-aligned opposition arose during his 2014 re-election, resulting in a tighterthan-desired GOP primary win of 9 percentage points.
The legislative wins he touts most aren’t really the kinds of accomplishments that put politicians in the limelight: A copyright law change to sort out pay for songwriters in the digital age; simplification of the federal college aid application; legislation to cut in half maintenance backlogs in national parks, national forests and other public lands; national laboratories funding; and an education law that gives states authority to decide how to use certain testing results to evaluate teachers and schools.
But the spotlight shone brightly on Alexander during some particularly fraught moments in the administration — most notably, when the senator voted against allowing witnesses and to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial.
“On the impeachment, I said I thought he did it,” Alexander said. “That didn’t justify removing him from office.”
Alexander, who served in the Senate with Biden, said his focus on unifying the country is “exactly the right message,” but he said Biden should not veer too far left. Senate Republicans could aim to block Biden’s priorities if they deem them too progressive. Thus far, key Senate Republicans have kept quiet on confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet nominees.
“He’s a person of good character,” Alexander said of Biden. “He’s well-liked in the Senate on both sides of the aisle. He listens well. He’s well-acquainted with leaders around the world. Those are his strengths. The difficulty he is going to have is with the radical left agenda of the Democratic national party.”