|
![[Alexander]](alexander.gif)
The Search For Alexander
He has prospered by stressing what he is not:
neither too old, mean nor extreme. But who is he?
By Dan Goodgame and John Dickerson
(TIME, Feb. 26) -- Dog people tend to pick straightforward names for their pets, as with
Gus, the slobbery Labrador who has been barking at former presidential
candidate Phil Gramm for staying too long on the campaign trail. Lamar
Alexander, though, is a cat person, and when his family acquired two new
kittens last year, he dubbed them Kato and Ito, a hopeful play on the
potential of fame. For the past year, as Alexander struggled to win the
attention of Republican-primary voters, he would flash his chin-up smile
and explain that he was "encouraged by the experience of Kato Kaelin
that it's possible these days to get very well known very quickly."
That's just what Alexander finally did last week, and just in time,
surging to a surprising third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses and a
top-three position in polling just before the New Hampshire primary.
With most Republicans rejecting Iowa runner-up Pat Buchanan as too
extreme and divisive, Alexander managed to position himself as the
electable alternative to front runner Bob Dole--the place where all the
other candidates, perhaps including Dole, would like to be.
Alexander, a multimillionaire lawyer whose ruthless intensity is nicely
camouflaged by his courtly manner, carries a blue-ribbon resume. He
served as Education Secretary to George Bush and earlier won acclaim as
two-term Governor of Tennessee for reforming education and attracting
high-paying jobs to his state. Alexander's stump speech touts a
neopopulist plan to transfer $200 billion in federal programs ranging
from welfare to law enforcement back to the states, communities,
churches and families that handled those responsibilities before the New
Deal.
His pitch for personal and community responsibility last week won
Alexander the endorsement of bleeding-heart conservative William
Bennett. But that theme is sounded by most of Alexander's rival
candidates for President and does not account for his rise. Instead, his
trick has been to turn a liability (he has little money for TV ads) into
something of an asset (he isn't running those attack ads that voters say
they hate.) What's more, Alexander retains this Mr. Clean image even
while running a campaign that is subtly negative. As Dole points out,
Alexander was the first of the G.O.P. candidates to run an attack ad,
back in September, against Pete Wilson, whom he accused of sins ranging
from tax increases to flip-flopping on affirmative action. But Alexander
had the good sense to stop running such ads before voters in Iowa and
New Hampshire turned against them. He has come this far mainly by
emphasizing what he is not: not old, not mean, not a "Washington
insider" or a "Wall Street insider," not a reckless right-winger or a TV
mudslinger.
His new success, though, has inspired rivals to work overtime to define
who Alexander is. They have been collecting "opposition research" on him
for months, and are wielding it, in ads and speeches as well as leaks to
reporters, to take advantage of his soft, blurry image and to define him
their way: as a hypocrite posing as a folksy, plaid-clad "outsider"
while pocketing millions of dollars in profits from insider investment
deals not available to the average American; as another slick Southern
Governor who repeatedly raised taxes and now dares to run as a
conservative. Alexander's communications director, Mark Merritt,
retorts, "Bob Dole is desperate, and now that we're gaining, he's taken
up Steve Forbes' mudslinging mantle."
In fact, campaign sources told TIME, Dole is taking up the mantle of the
Bush campaign, which mortally wounded Dole's candidacy with negative ads
in 1988. Late on a snowy Friday in February of that year, Governor John
Sununu, running the Bush campaign in New Hampshire, personally
delivered to WMUR-TV an ad called "Senator Straddle," which detailed
Dole's flip-flops to devastating effect. Late on a snowy Friday last
week, Governor Steve Merrill, a Sununu protege, personally delivered to
WMUR an ad that attacked Alexander as "too liberal." The ad reminded
voters that Alexander once proposed a state income tax for Tennessee,
which, like taxophobic New Hampshire, does not have one. The income tax
that Alexander proposed, his supporters explain, would have allowed him
to cut other levies while keeping Tennessee a low-taxed state. But
without money for TV ads, his defense might not get widely heard.
While one such skirmish can sink a campaign, both supporters and rivals
will find much more to debate in the character and record of Lamar
Alexander, from his idyllic Appalachian boyhood through a public career
driven by a steel-willed, bland-faced ambition.
ANDREW LAMAR ALEXANDER was born in 1940 in Maryville, Tennessee, an
aluminum-mill town beside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. His
parents, both educators, saw that their son and two daughters were
reading before they entered kindergarten. When Lamar was a schoolchild,
his days began at 4 a.m., the hour he rose to deliver newspapers. He had
piano practice at 6 a.m., plus after-school sports and choir practice.
Weekends were for church and Scouts and chores.
Young Lamar, a natural leader, was elected Governor of Boys State--just
as Bill Clinton was. His high school principal, J.P. Stewart, remembers
once paddling Lamar for making whooshing noises in class, but was so
impressed with "his ease and eloquence in public speaking" that he
predicted to the faculty that Lamar would enter national politics.
By the accounts of Alexander's childhood friends, Maryville was pretty
much as he describes it in his speeches: a town where the schools and
churches were busy and crowded well into the evenings; where nosy
neighbors kept kids out of trouble. Though Alexander constantly invokes
"the challenges of the next century"--a riff mainly designed to paint
Bob Dole as a fossil--the vision he offers is one of middle-class
village life in the 1950s.
For all the disdain he heaps today on the "arrogant empire" of
Washington, Alexander told friends in college and law school that he was
eager for a career in government and politics. He clerked for a federal
judge in New Orleans, the legendary liberal John Minor Wisdom, while
moonlighting as a trombone and washboard player in a jazz band on
Bourbon Street. He worked as a Senate aide to his mentor, Howard Baker
of Tennessee. And he served a stint as an aide in the Nixon White House.
Returning to Tennessee, he lost his first bid for Governor in 1974
because, he recalls, "I flew around in a blue suit from one Rotary
meeting to the next, preaching to the converted." All of that changed
four years later, when Alexander donned a red-and-black plaid shirt and
walked 1,022 miles, crisscrossing the state, impressing voters with his
vigor and intelligence.
During two terms as Governor, Alexander took on the teachers' union to
enact merit pay and other education reforms, which sharply improved the
state's ranking in national achievement tests but required a 1¢ increase
in the sales tax. He also raised fuel taxes three times to expand
Tennessee's interstate highways without federal help. Those investments,
combined with 11 trips to Japan and scores to Detroit, helped Alexander
persuade Nissan and Saturn to build huge new factories in Tennessee,
creating thousands of high-paying jobs.
This period revealed the steel behind Alexander's smile. Cavit Cheshire,
then executive secretary of the Tennessee Education Association, told
the New York Times that the Governor was "only nonconfrontational until
you cross him." The public seldom saw this side of Alexander. But
friends and family, as well as political rivals, have seen his hard
side. By his own account Alexander neglected his family during his terms
as Governor. One of his daughters, Leslee, wrote in a 1987 essay, "I
characterize my father as an egret, standing on one leg and viewing the
world. Although powerful in government, he is withdrawn in family life."
During his time as Governor, while doing good for his state, Alexander
did well for himself and his family. Worth $151,000 when he was first
elected Governor in 1978, he has increased his wealth at least
twentyfold, to more than $3 million. He has released all his tax returns
and explains, "When I was in private life, I tried to make money, and I
did."
But Alexander made much of his fortune through sweetheart deals,
initiated while he was in public office, which could be seen as favors
from cronies and people doing business with the state. Should he win the
G.O.P. nomination, Democrats will make sure these deals get the same
scrutiny given the Clintons over Whitewater. "Lamar is the consummate
insider," says Will Cheek, chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party.
"That's the kind of guy who gets these deals." Examples:
- The Knoxville Journal came on the market in 1981, and Alexander, then
Governor, was invited to join a group of investors who had an option to
buy it. Alexander paid $1 for his share of the option, which the
investors then sold to Gannett Corp. for stock and options that were
eventually worth $620,000 to Alexander.
- Whittle Communications, a publishing company that planned a chain of
for-profit schools, employed Alexander as a consultant in 1987, between
his term as Governor and his appointment as president of the University
of Tennessee. In return, the Alexanders were given the right to purchase
$10,000 in stock, which they did. Company founder Chris Whittle,
however, did not cash the Alexanders' check until October 1988, after
Whittle agreed to sell part of his company to Time Inc., which pushed
the stock price up sharply. Two months later, Whittle bought back the
Alexanders' stock for $330,000.
- Blackberry Farm, a romantic $200-a-night inn and restaurant in the
Appalachian foothills, was one-third owned by Alexander when he became
president of the university. Having informed school officials that he
had disposed of his interest in the inn, he began recommending it for
university functions--14 of them that eventually cost $64,626. What he
didn't disclose was that he had transferred his interest in the inn to
his wife. Had they known of Honey Alexander's interest in the inn,
university officials "would have continued their objections," according
to a 1992 state report.
- The Ingram Group, run by Alexander's gubernatorial chief of staff Tom
Ingram, received $36,472 from the university for a study of ways to sell
more football tickets. Those payments were steered to Ingram by
Alexander, and when university officials objected, Alexander directed
that the funds be routed through a third party.
- The Memphis law firm of Baker Donelson Bearman & Caldwell has paid
Alexander $295,000 over the past year, even while he has been
campaigning full time. He has filed no hourly billings, but instead is
paid for "strategic advice" to three large clients. A former partner of
the firm, describing the arrangement to the Wall Street Journal, said,
"I think it's clearly an investment in case he becomes President."
If so, that investment is looking far better than it did only a week
ago. Drawing large and responsive crowds in New Hampshire, Alexander
sharpened his "compassionate conservative" pitch, promising to "get
Washington off our backs, and us off our butts." If parents don't like
their kids seeing trashy talk shows and R-rated movies on cable, he
says, they shouldn't just blame Hollywood; they should "turn off the TV
and read to your kids." He would abolish the Department of Education (a
move he never mentioned when he was running the place) and return
Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled, to the states.
He wants welfare to be administered entirely by nonprofit community
groups, with the help of a new $500 tax credit for charitable
contributions.
Meanwhile, Alexander has sought to appease the Republican right in ways
that are at odds with his moderate record. Since 1994 he has adopted
tortured new positions on abortion and affirmative action. He promises a
"fifth branch of the military" to patrol U.S. borders for illegal
immigrants and drug smugglers. And he allowed last week, in response to
questions, that if he won the nomination, he would "consider" Pat
Robertson, the loopy televangelist, as his running mate.
To assess what he would do as President, one wonders whether to read his
lips or his footprints. Would he use government, as he did in Tennessee,
to improve the nation's infrastructure and education and to attract
better jobs? He says not. He says he would shrink the Federal Government
and empower Governors--and ministers and parents--to do what he and the
people of his state did.
While Alexander struggled last week to duck the "liberal" label, another
danger lurked: that his smooth, smiling, political persona would remind
voters too much of that other former Southern Governor now sitting in
the White House. The trademark red-and-black plaid shirt, which seemed
fresh 18 years ago, now seems to some voters to be as contrived as some
of Alexander's new political positions. No wonder he's the candidate
Bill Clinton fears the most.
--With reporting by Adam Cohen/Nashville with Alexander and Michael
Duffy/Manchester
TIME This Week:
|
