Alexander driven by faith, family, service
MARYVILLE – On the way from Knoxville to Maryville, the Smoky Mountains peek from behind their foggy haze, an ageless witness along the familiar route.
This is the way home for Lamar Alexander. The now retired senator and former governor will spend the rest of his days where they began, in the mountain’s foothills.
He’s leaving with more influence on every corner and aspect of the state than anyone you can name, a fact woefully understood. His presence is greater than Dolly’s, his accomplishments more impressive than Manning’s. The impact of his political career on this state equals or exceeds Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson, as well as longtime mentor and friend U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., all of whom called Tennessee home.
Alexander rarely spends much time talking about himself, but as his time in public service neared its end more than four decades after it began, he sat down for multiple far-reaching interviews with Knox News to reflect on his career, today’s divided politics and his legacy. Knox News combined these talks with over two dozen interviews with former staffers, colleagues and rivals to put his career into perspective.
Lest there be any confusion, Alexander’s departure is no swan song. He certainly has not gone off quietly off into the sunset like many of his moderate Republican colleagues.
In his final year in Congress’ upper chamber, Alexander brought to fruition his crowning legislative achievement — protecting his beloved Smokies and national parks across the country — but he also stared down his contemporaries as he supported a controversial Supreme Court nominee and took arrows in defense of an impeached president.
Alexander likely will be remembered, at least in the short term, for the latter episodes; last impressions can be hard to shake.
But framing Alexander through so narrow a window would obscure his myriad accomplishments. He instilled confidence in a floundering state government, championed protected lands everywhere, created a new auto economy for the American Southeast, elevated education reform and set the state on a path that still boosts the Republican super-majority in Nashville.
As he leaves office, Alexander is the anti-soap box politician who dominates cable news. He is lauded for his ability to get a deal done quietly, and he’s one of the rare contemporary officeholders who succeeds, and does it with large bipartisan majorities.
He leaves as the Senate’s favorite son. Someone who is revered and will be missed inside a chamber that has screeched nearly to a halt lately, politics jamming the gears. Alexander is one of the few who knows the mechanics of the institution enough to unstick the gears, serving as a frequent go-between for leaders of both parties.
His critics say he wasn’t harsh enough during President Trump’s norm-busting term. Others have said he wasn’t conservative enough and was too willing to work with the other side. But they’re all missing an important point: Alexander didn’t view his job through these lenses. He wanted to get legislation done, party identification be damned.
Decades ago, Alexander asked his brother-in-law, the Rev. William J. Carl, III, to preach the sermon at his first inauguration as governor. The preacher picked a passage about King Solomon praying for the ability to discern between good and evil. It’s been the refrain to his work since.
The best thing you can do, Alexander said, is to ask what is right, and then get it done. As he knows better than most, hardly any decision, particularly in the Senate, is black and white. They are conflicts of principles, or decisions between two valid alternatives.
“So, some issues are right and wrong, but most issues are not,” he said. “And if you choose up sides, and claim that you’re always right, and the other guy’s always wrong, you don’t get much resolved.”
From the beginning
It was his mother, Flo, who pushed and instilled a sense of duty in Lamar that has driven his life. For some 30 years, she ran a preschool for neighborhood children out of a makeshift classroom in a garage in the Alexander backyard.
She was tough and demanding. More than one person interviewed for this package of stories called her a force.
A former student once told Lamar that Flo tracked her down decades later out of the blue, calling to make sure she had made something of herself. That was the expectation of everyone, and more so for her children.
The family verse, 2 Timothy 2:15, gives no room for complaining: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
For Lamar, the verse (and his mother’s push) meant work. He began piano lessons when he was 4 years old and had multiple newspaper routes when he was in school. Her lessons would guide his life.
Flo taught Lamar to go big or don’t go, as one advisor put it. When he was sworn in as the president of the University of Tennessee System, Flo was there correcting him — from the audience — on a slight grammatical error.
It was his time running the UT System that left him wanting more, and even those who have long cheered him on label the whole experiment a disappointment. Alexander’s appointment on the heels of being a two-term governor was met with both skepticism and intrigue, and more than a handful of UT leaders assumed he would park himself at UT until a better job came along, a charge Alexander dismissed.
A better job came along. As he likes to quote a former Nixon staffer, when the president calls you have to have a good reason to tell him no, and Alexander didn’t say no when President George H.W. Bush asked him to be secretary of education. With fewer than three years at the helm of the UT System, Alexander’s impact was minimal.
It was natural for him to push for the top. He never saw it as arrogance, but rather where he was best suited to be. As the one advisor put it, Lamar swung at the pitch hanging in front of him. Those pitches led him to the governor’s mansion, UT, to Bush’s Cabinet and, finally, 18 years in the Senate. They also led him to two disappointing runs for president.
“I was taught from the beginning that God had given me some gifts, whether it was piano playing, or academically, or whatever it might turn out to be, and I was expected to make something of it,” he said. “That’s why I had this life.”
It’s why he served in the Senate until his 80th birthday, when he and his wife, Honey, could have retired long ago.
There’s nothing in 2 Timothy 2:15, Alexander said, about retirement.
The loss
When he steps out of the Capitol one last time and he and Honey come back to East Tennessee, where it all began, the Senate and the people of Tennessee will lose decades of know-how, the kind of experience that can never be replaced.
We’ll lose a steady voice and the man who more times than not was marked by his bipartisanship. We’ll lose a conservationist. A healthcare and education advocate. A steadfast supporter of the Oak Ridge National Lab and a champion of UT.
But more than that, longtime said longtime UT political science professor Michael Fitzgerald, the Senate and state are losing a good, decent public servant.
“And this is what is the loss,” Fitzgerald said. “Because that decency translated into effective government, and effective leadership and government is a precious, precious commodity. It’s a rare treasure. It’s difficult to find and almost impossible to hold.”
These stories were compiled from interviews and accounts from Alexander’s book “Steps Along the Way” and Keel Hunt’s “Crossing the Aisle.” Alexander’s 42 years of public service ended Sunday.