The Man From Tennessee

...State Senator Jim Holcomb speaks with much personal respect for Alexander, but is backing Phil Gramm, who has won more straw polls than Alexander at county GOP gatherings...

...Alexander wrote a check for $10,000 that under federal ethics or securities laws, which illustrates yet again that the ethics rules of small Southern states are not a useful measure of integrity...

...Perhaps the most surprising aspect of his current incarnation is his claim that he has always been a populist conservative...

...In a June 16 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Alexander argued that the "morally empty values promoted by . . . Hollywood" are only half the problem...

...We know that public life has paved his way to personal wealth—but what else has he done, and what, if anything, does he stand for...

...Alexander announced that academic standards and not "diversity" were the criteria for accreditation, and he reconfigured the system to give permanent competition to the politically correct accreditors...

...All told, the Alexanders invested $5,000 in the stock...

...We are at a point in our history where we have more opportunity than ever before, and yet people have lost their belief that their children will have a better life than they've had...

...Still," he wrote in Six Months Off, one of his two memoirs, "there was one thing that eluded me...

...Under Governor Bill Clinton," Alexander likes to say, "Arkansas' per capita income went from 49th to 49th...

...Three key decisions illustrate his approach to the issues of the day...

...With the GOP capture of the House and Senate, being an outsider has lost much of its cachet...

...restoring to American families the freedom to plan their lives...

...Williams had gleefully anticipated using Kennedy's bill to foil politically correct racial discrimination...

...Kate O'Beirne, a former Heritage Foundation vice-president who followed education policy, recalls one more idea Alexander was particularly enthusiastic about...

...I think the American people would rather have a president who made more good investments than bad...

...Among other things, accreditation determines whether a school can receive federal scholarships...

...In this race, he's Kathleen Brown...

...I could feel that my motiLisa Schiffren, who worked in the Department of Education in 1991, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...

...Like so much of the South, Tennessee became a hotbed of entrepreneurship in the late 1970s and '80s, and Alexander deserves some credit for this...

...When his term expired in January 1987, the entire Alexander family headed for Australia for "Six Months Off," the title of the book he wrote about the family vacation...

...His political repositioning reflects the current zeitgeist, in a mild, non-threatening form...

...Given Alexander's sweet relations with the business community, the remark might seem ironic...

...My recollection is that Lamar was highly regarded," says Martin Anderson, a conservative economist who worked with Alexander in the highly politicized Nixon White House...

...White House speechwriters recall battles in which Alexander and Leslie Arsht, his communications deputy, fought tooth and nail to remove references to educational choice from presidential speeches...

...Pete Wilson is a moderate, running on a few red-meat issues like immigration reform, and has many prominent Reaganite supporters...

...It was at a Hill staff softball game that he met his wife to be, Leslee "Honey" Buhler, a Smith graduate from Texas then working for Sen...

...More important, can he overcome the lack of a significant base, name identification, and office...

...to 6 p.m...

...Conservatives inside the Bush administration and out believed the most important reform was a national policy that allowed parents to use vouchers to send their children to the school they preferred...

...In 1967, Alexander joined the campaign of Howard Baker, who became the first Tennessee Republican elected to the Senate in four decades...

...It is hard to imagine that his $45,000 advance covered the cost of the trip, which must have exceeded $128,308—the amount he deducted in expenses related to the book...

...Whether Alexander split the difference because he preferred to, or because he was under orders from the White House, is unclear, but he adamantly defends his decision today...

...Merritt previously ran Oliver North's Senate campaign...

...Alexander has been running for two years now...

...Marguerite Sallee, who had served as staff director on Honey's Task Force on Healthy Children, and was then appointed state commissioner of human services by Alexander, left her job to head the start-up, of which she became CEO...

...Despite his national obscurity, Alexander is usually ranked at the back of the first tier of GOP candidates, after Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, the clear leader, and with Texas Sen...

...When CCA proposed privatizing Tennessee's prisons in 1985, First Lady Honey swapped the stock with Jack Massey's venture capital firm for shares in a life insurance company...

...The current GOP budget defunds America 2000 entirely...

...The controlling owner of the retreat is Sandy Beall, the millionaire founder of the Ruby Tuesday's restaurant chain and a longtime financial backer of Alexander's...

...Cynics saw the shirt and walk as a gimmick to fool conservative, rural Tennesseans...

...This was his only unambiguously principled decision...

...As Williams recalled in a recent interview, Bush responded by immediately releasing a statement affirming his support for the United Negro College Fund...

...A former Department of Justice official who advised Alexander on the policy characterized his approach as: "There must be a way to paper this over that's lawful, that also shuts people up...

...Gramm is] just more conservative on a bunch of issues," says Holcomb, "including social issues Lamar wouldn't talk about...

...His record, he insisted, proves the authenticity of his conservatism...

...More than most Tennesseans, he benefited from the risks taken by a handful of entrepreneurs, who, in time-honored fashion, "took care" of him...

...His wife Honey told him, "The next time you run, you'd do better if you knew—and could tell voters—why you want to be governor...

...Later she headed the Task Force on Healthy Children, and, in addition to dabbling in their investments (see "Cashing In" below), she has been a member of the board of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting...

...As a question of law, it was clear...

...This he did over the next year, with a policy that Williams and other Bush administration proponents of non-discrimination describe diplomatically as "extraordinary finesse" and, more bluntly, "caving...

...What would he do about it...

...Wilson is good at running in general elections," he says, "against liberals like Kathleen Brown...

...The IRS does not allow cost of living deductions for travel books, though many authors get away with it...

...At times he squints or stares at the wall as he appears to think through an answer...

...Howard Baker, Alexander's longtime mentor, continues to be his financial supporter...

...But then I reread the candidate's stump speech, which contained, verbatim, the majority of his answers to my questions...

...If you noticed him in an airport, you'd guess he was a doctor or some kind of executive...

...A recent interview in Nashville confirmed Ravitch's claim that he listens closely and responds thoughtfully...

...This is the basis of Alexander's proud claim that he co-founded a business that now employs 1,200 people...

...But there was nothing conservative about it," she says, "if you mean making government smaller...

...As a question of politics, I guess not," Williams concedes...

...Indeed, nowhere in his memoirs does Alexander describeHe recruited both a Nissan and a General Motors/Saturn plant to the state, and made doing business in Tennessee more attractive by building highways and improving the school system...

...The three policy areas he'd concentrate on to restore confidence are: "fostering economic growth to provide a steady stream of new jobs...

...I've joked with Bill Bennett that he could advocate pure liberalism and conservatives would cheer, and I could say, `Off with their heads,' and they'd say I was a liberal...

...Responding to such criticisms, Alexander recently said he "didn't care about applause...

...Campaign manager Dan Pero came from Michigan Governor John Engler's staff...

...Our motto is 'Come on along,' which is an invitation to join us...

...He is a fit, good-looking man, of medium build with regular features and a much-receded hairline...

...Alexander attended Vanderbilt University, where he was editor of the school paper and a great crusader for integration, and graduated in 1962...

...Alexander uses a laptop himself, a rarity among politicians...

...After a decade of educational reform reports and exhortations, the time had come for action...

...n that time he has spent a total of four years in the private sector...

...The stump speech is itself a truncated version of a chapter Alexander authored, with the help of a ghostwriter, for a Hudson Institute book called The New Promise of American Life...

...But along with the help of an obviously corrupt opponent, and the support of the state's business elite, the newly folksy Alexander carried the election...

...Howard Baker, and others purchased an option to buy the failing Knoxville Journal...

...In December 1990, Michael Williams, then-assistant secretary of education for civil rights, called a press conference to announce a curtailment of race-based scholarships, based on a case involving black-only scholarships at the University of Arizona...

...At the same time, the secretary argued, because the Arizona case involved privately financed scholarships, it should not be covered by Title VI regulations...

...He dropped the traditional blue suit, adopted his trademark plaid shirt, and walked across Tennessee for six months—literally walked...

...And he remembers one especially telling anecdote about the former governor...

...It is a small mountain town, in a region that remained in the Union when the rest of the state seceded...

...to provide daycare, job training, adult education,and values...

...But a June Supreme Court decision unambiguously confirmed the Williams interpretation...

...His senior campaign staff has excellent conservative credentials, but lacks national campaign experience...

...John Tower...

...Gramm is like a bulldozer, saying get on board or I'll run you over...

...Four years later, Alexander ran again, as men who feel destined to govern must do...

...She adds that he now takes the radical position of including parochial schools in a widespread choice system that he believes is inevitable...

...Daniel Casse, Alexander's brainy young policy director, served in the Bush White House and worked with William Kristol's Project for the Republican Future...

...Starting a company is hard work, which Lamar missed by being in Australia, though Sallee loyally told reporters for the Nashville Tennessean that he did "hands on" work in 1987...

...He went on to law school at New York University, and then served a clerkship in New Orleans with Judge John Minor Wisdom, who had a national reputation for progressive views on civil rights issues...

...When I told him it was going to be in a K-Mart parking lot, he was horrified...

...they simply had to broaden the language of the scholarship criteria by adding other qualifications—relevant or not—so that race did not appear to be the sole criterion...

...stock that he subsequently sold for $620,000...

...As he later wrote, he was bowled over by how cute she looked as she slid into a base in her red shorts...

...and returning to a culture of personal responsibility by "rebuilding families, neighborhoods, schools and churches...

...continued on page 78) The American Spectator September 1995 37 LISA SCHIFFREN (continued from page 37) Free to Not Choose The third and most critical issue that Alexander faced during his tenure at the Education Department was school choice...

...Though Alexander claims he was always for choice, his early opponents say that he became a more enthusiastic supporter of the concept over time...

...Jack Massey, a founder ofwas never cashed...

...He never did anything to encourage the growth of a responsible conservative voice in state government," adds a Tennessee GOP activist...

...at Blackberry Farm during Lamar's tenure, because Honey's ownership violated university nepotism rules...

...78 The American Spectator September 1995...

...Holcomb, a former social worker, considers himself part of the more populist generation of lawmakers who have been elected to the Tennessee legislature in the decade since Alexander left office...

...Other deals offered the Alexanders but not private citizens include Honey's purchase in 1984 of Corrections Corporation of America stock for $8,900...

...By early July, Alexander was halfway there...

...and Running One prominent aspect of America 2000 was the business-government partnership that Alexander has always found so attractive...

...N ow that Alexander is making a run for president, voters will have to sense why they should support yet another former governor of a small Southern state...

...Such deals are not illegal, and it will be up to voters to judge whether they are proper and what they say about a man who has spent his career in public office...

...He was offering his best strategic advice...

...He sold it back to the owner when he became governor in 1979, then repurchased it for the same $10,000 in 1987...

...It required a large staff at the Education Department to be on call to explain it to the community leaders and educators who were supposed to implement it...

...These highlights largely explain how Alexander entered public office in 1979 with a stated net worth of approximately $151,000, and now claims assets of between $3 and $6 million...

...That history still shapes the area's political identity today...

...I have a moderate personality," he said...

...The Education Years Alexander's actual political work in the 1990s amounts to twenty months as secretary of education in the Bush administration...

...He's big on keeping up with people...

...Indeed, the Clinton administration immediately reversed Alexander's policy on taking office...

...I cared about implementation...

...But Murphy dismisses him, too...

...Though Alexander's actions on the issue undermine his campaign claim to be strenuously opposed to affirmative action, Michael Williams believes he understands the reason for Alexander's waffling...

...When asked about his achievements as secretary of education, Alexander said, "I worked to lay the groundwork for President Bush's second administration...

...Once the issue hit the papers Williams, who is black, found himself facing not only the black lobby, but universities that dole out race-specific scholarships, and even President Bush...

...She later sold those shares for $142,000, a profit of about $133,000...

...It has nothing to do with ideas, or because they're for Newt...

...We wanted to break the monopoly of the public schools," O'Beirne said, "not make them the hub of community life...

...though the institution was public, the money was private...

...The company, founded by Tennesseans, was formed to privatize prisons...

...The position may be more a reflection of the candidate's personality than a political call...

...In practice, however, all of the efforts of Alexander's department were subsumed under his America 2000 plan for national education reform...

...This time he hired a slick, liberal Republican Washington consultant (Doug Bailey, now editor of the insider political newsletter Hotline...

...Such a tightly controlled script raises the specter of an "empty suit," as well as doubts about intellectual flexibility and comfort with the ideas he is promulgating...

...Alexander accompanied him to Washington as a legislative assistant...

...Disappointed" is the word most often used...

...Richard Lugar, a serious man with two decades on the national stage who is given zero chance of winning the nomination...

...The passionate surely won't be satisfied with Alexander's new position on abortion, for instance, which is that he would neither fund nor encourage its use, yet not challenge the status quo...

...Nor is devolution true libertarianism, in which the state really gets out of the business of education or welfare...

...The portrait that emerges from his tenure at the Education Department is of a man both politically dexterous and ideologically ambiguous...

...Williams cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which specifically forbids racial discrimination in higher education, as grounds for disallowing such scholarships, which had become common practice as a minority recruiting device...

...Our policy was a principled one," he says...

...When Lamar Alexander first ran for governor of Tennessee in 1974, his professional qualifications were typical of politically ambitious young men: law school, a clerkship with a famous judge, campaign work and a staff job for Senator Howard Baker, and a minor post in the Nixon White House...

...He suggested I have it at the local country club...

...But unless the price of real estate doubled in a year—a year the rest of the country saw the real estate market slump—at least one side of the deal was artificially sweetened...

...Under the guidance of David Kearns, the former Xerox chairman he recruited as deputy secretary of education, Alexander was in an excellent position to meet with Chambers of Commerce eager to upgrade the labor force in their districts...

...If you noticed him in an airport, you'd guess he was a doctor or some kind of executive...

...In 1977 Alexander purchased a one-third interest in a luxury Tennessee corporate retreat called Blackberry Farm for $10,000...

...Something else in me must have known why I wanted to be governor—and the voters must have sensed it...

...Choice would simultaneously create competition between the schools, leading to educational improvement...

...That scares people...

...So even before he was confirmed, Alexander was asked to defuse the situation...

...While it contained much of merit, the plan essentially resembled a corporate planner's extravaganza...

...If conservatives don't understand that, I assure you that university officials, civil rights leaders, and the Clinton administration did...

...Tax cuts and a balanced budget—which, Alexander emphasizes, he achieved for all eight years of his governorship—arethe key to his vision...

...Robert Doman, it is puzzling that a former governor who served an undistinguished twenty months in the Bush cabinet is considered more credible than, say, Indiana Sen...

...It takes much prodding to get Alexander to go beyond process and reveal what he really thinks...

...He's an incredible networker...

...He gets them invested in him...

...His first aim as president, he says firmly, "is to help the United States recapture its confidence...

...Or perhaps the big boys were committed to more promising contenders...

...Freedom and personal responsibility will be restored by devolving all federal functions to the lowest possible level, making Congress increasingly irrelevant...

...Dole is "too old," he says, and Gramm is "too mean...

...Alexander, who put up $1, later swapped it for Gannett Co...

...Colleagues from Alexander's early years seem to remember him universally as an affable, bright guy...

...The region is solidly Republican, in what one Nashville lawyer describes as a "purely cultural" way...

...When Alexander became Tennessee's governor in 1978, in the midst of Jimmy Carter's presidency, conservatives were just crystallizing their revolutionary ideas on taxes and regulation...

...Baker's law firm provided Alexander with other financial opportunities...

...A flat tax and capital gains cuts will create new jobs...

...The American Spectator September 1995 35 of the last three years his income has topped $1 million, though he's essentially been running for president since the end of the Bush administration...

...Such transfers are not legal Kentucky Fried Chicken and, in the 1980s, the massively profitable Hospital Corporation of America, is one of the rich men who has taken good care of Alexander...

...The University was embarrassed when it became known that the school had spent $64,626 for business retreats "Those people are Republicans the way they're Baptists—'cause their daddies and their granddaddies were Republicans...

...Mike Murphy, the Atwater-like senior consultant, worked for Dan Quayle...

...It's hard to imagine a more expedient way of amplifying one's rolodex...

...But there is little to suggest Alexander was much interested in those ideas...

...I believe in capitalism and this is how every job in America is created...

...While his name used to evoke words such as "moderate" and "centrist," he is now pushing for a radical devolution of the federal government's tasks to the states...

...Cashing In The state of Tennessee got rich in the 1980s, and so did Lamar Alexander...

...He envisioned turning public schools into the cores of their communities, keeping them open from 6 a.m...

...If it's true that a successful politician is measured by the enemies he makes, it's revealing that in Tennessee it is just about impossible to find anyone who'll say he hates Alexander, or even strongly dislikes him...

...When a candidate chooses youth and energy over the establishment, it may be because he's forward-looking and willing to take risks...

...Alexander bristles at such talk, preferring to blame the 34 The American Spectator September 1995 perception that he is other than a hard-line conservative on his demeanor...

...Ravitch is pleased that he never resorts to stirring up passions which, she says, cost the GOP so much at Houston in 1992...

...He left the governorship in 1986, and since then his income has averaged around half a million dollars a year, less than one-third of that in salary...

...This reasoning was the basis of Alexander's response to Bob Dole's recent attack on Hollywood...

...She later sold those shares for $142,000, a profit of about $133,000...

...Wherever possible he's for letting corporate America take over from government...

...Williams noted the great irony of this view, given that Ted Kennedy had a few years earlier forced passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which required any institution that received a dime of public money to comply with all civil rights regulations...

...The outline called for a daily conference call with the secretary, a computer network, and a hotline...

...When my walk across Tennessee ended, I honestly still couldn't have expressed, just in so many words, why I wanted to be governor, or what I hoped to accomplish...

...Actually, he didn't even put up the $10,000 for the stock, since the amount was drawn against the $125,000 in "consulting fees" Whittle paid Lamar during 1987 for help with a magazine that ultimately failed...

...But everyone who's ever worked for—or against—him warns not to underestimate him...

...A lso in 1987, Christopher Whittle, the Tennessee millionaire who was part owner of Esquire, let Alexander purchase shares in closely-held Whittle Communications...

...And, in a party where everyone is more conservative than he once was, Alexander has had the good sense to reinvent himself politically...

...In 1991, Alexander estimated the value of the stock at $800,000, a 15,900 percent return on an investment held for four years...

...Indeed, his Wall Street Journal op-ed contained many of the same anecdotes and examples used in the book chapter...

...I'm not angry," he continued...

...Devolution is fashionable, but is it sufficient policy...

...a policy issue or political fight that interested him beyond general economic development...

...CCCI, which identified a real market need for corporate child care, boomed...

...And Mike Murphy, Alexander's strategist, points to the central flaws in the leading GOP contenders...

...But they don't recall a thing about his political views...

...Paying such a large stipend to a no-show is rare, so it wasn't surprising when the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the firm had broken up over the matter of Alexander's compensation...

...What if Newt Gingrich gets in the race, or Colin Powell...

...Again, when he became president of U.T., Alexander put ownership in Honey's name to avoid conflict-of-interest rules...

...I think it's a strength...

...His fortune is founded on sweetheart deals not available to the general public, and a series of cozy sinecures provided by local businessmen...

...From Washington, we get a federal government determined to usurp and undermine the authority and responsibility of families, along with policies that imply that individuals should not be held accountable for their actions...

...CI When CCA proposed privatizing Tennessee's prisons in 1985, First Lady Honey swapped the stock with Jack Massey's venture capital firm for shares in a life insurance company...

...Alexander's chances seem barely worth weighing...

...It always got applause...

...The GOP convention is ten months away, and Alexander has yet to break 15 percent name recognition in the polls...

...I remember this so clearly," one former speechwriter said, "because Bush loved talking about choice...

...Those people are Republican the way they're Baptists—'cause their daddies and their granddaddies were Republicans...

...With the primaries scheduled so close together that an unexpectedly good showing in Iowa wouldn't leave much time to raise funds for New Hampshire, the conventional wisdom is that $20 million, in hand by February 1996, is the price of admission for a serious bid...

...But if he lacks personal magnetism, Alexander does have The American Spectator September 1995 33 another valuable asset—money...

...A lexander always speaks in firm, well-formulated sentences...

...Alexander's management style is to choose two or three targets and go at them full bore...

...But maybe he's playing to a different audience...

...vation was more than just wanting to do my best at some challenging public service job...

...During his tenure the state's per capita income shot up from 47th to 36th in the nation...

...Alexander declines to say what those fees were in 1987, but they were $100,000 in 1988...

...For all its careful crafting, Alexander's current platform is a standard mix of many of the policy goals and analytic bromides now circulating inside the GOP...

...He promoted a lot of nice looking people with no principles...

...it's hard to imagine Hillary Clinton shifting her assets to Bill...

...It's hard to campaign against government when your team is making a revolution inside the Beltway...

...Or did he become a true believer...

...Asked to explain his financial success, Alexander said firmly, "During my career I've spent half my time in the private sector trying to make money...

...0 ne particularly interesting deal occurred in 1981, when then-Governor Alexander, Sen...

...Well, yes, but will "getting out of the way" right the culture...

...But whether it was post-Watergate repudiation of the GOP, or a more personal failure, Alexander, then 35, was trounced...

...He ran a "good government" administration, according to GOP national committeewoman Alice Algood...

...Since the end of the Bush adminis36 The American Spectator September 1995 tration Alexander has been "of counsel" to Baker's law firm, Baker, Donelson, Caldwell and Bearman...

...The portrait that emerges of this early Lamar looks an awful lot like that of his mentor Howard Baker—centrist, non-ideological, and, as one Washington insider put it, "quintessentially establishment...

...While it's clear that he isn't a crank candidate, like former State Department appointee Alan Keyes or California Rep...

...Despite his claim that he suggested to Ronald Reagan that the department be abolished, he accepted the job after angling for an administration post at least since the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans, where, amidst convention hall booths selling the usual bumper stickers and paraphernalia about abortion, guns, and homeschooling, there was a special kiosk selling Lamar—his buttons, his pictures, his books...

...Alexander's pattern of shifting assets to Honey suggests, among other things, a very secure marriage...

...But I never had a policy discussion with him...

...Baker subsequently got him a job in the Nixon White House, where he was executive assistant to the legendary Washington insider Bryce Harlow, who ran Nixon's congressional liaison operation...

...For each He is a fit, good-looking man, of medium build with regular features and a much-receded hairline...

...But can Alexander overcome the perception that he is an ideological opportunist...

...Choice was a minor component, along with national curricular standards, vocational education, "parenting" and worker training...

...A lot of Republican men of his generation and older suffer from what I call 'White Men's Disease,'" Williams says...

...According to communications director Mark Merritt, Alexander "has a rolodex of 25,000-30,000 names...

...While in Australia, Alexander received consulting fees from Tennessee's Belmont College to create a "leadership institute" at Belmont's Massey Business School...

...In the early years, she raised their four children while doing volunteer work, specifically for Planned Parenthood...

...After Whittle sold part of his company, Alexander received $330,000 for his shares, a profit of $320,000...

...He offered to come to my campaign kickoff," Holcomb remembers...

...Diane Ravitch, the leading educational theorist whom Alexander brought to the Department of Education, describes him as "a small government conservative, a libertarian," as she is...

...His first decision as secretary involved the Middle States College Accreditation board, which had threatened to strip accreditation from Bernard Baruch College in New York, because it didn't meet a diversity quota, and Westminster College, which, because it was a religious school whose board was comprised of ordained ministers, in a faith that did not ordain women, failed to pass the gender quota...

...His most recent tax returns show income of nearly $400,000 from the firm for 1994, a year he spent campaigning full-time...

...Lamar and Honey were also paid $44,000 in consulting fees in 1988 by Jack Massey's venture capital firm, Massey Birch...

...In 1987, Massey bankrolled a start-up company called Corporate Child Care Inc., to the tune of $2 million...

...And Dole—Dole is not the future...

...Saying "you choose" is a candidate's way of skirting decisions that define the job of governing...

...He serves on several boards, including Lockheed Martin (formerly Martin Marietta), a Baker client, which paid him $93,000 in 1994...

...If charisma requires a commanding presence, Alexander lacks it...

...Pete Wilson, all of whom hold powerful elective offices...

...But it also confirms that, true conservative or not, Alexander remains a likable figure, a man with an enormous fundraising capacity who evokes much personal loyalty, if not overwhelming political support...

...Keeps on Running...

...Lots of money and low name ID allow us to shape our message," says Mark Merritt, Alexander's director of communications, standing in his office at campaign headquarters in Nashville...

...Diane Ravitch recalls that he hired many conservatives, herself included, who came aboard with the understanding that he was in favor of choice...

...They have "such profound fear of being called a racist that they will sacrifice anything, especially principle, to avoid it...

...It also leads to the questions about political conviction that have dogged his campaign in this most ideological of years...

...The Bush administration failed to persuade Congress to pass any of these proposals, and Alexander left little, if any, substantive legacy in American education reform...

...When he became president of the University of Tennessee in 1988, Alexander shifted his Whittle stock to Honey to avoid conflict-of-interest rules...

...Alexander claims to have supported school choice from the start, but advisers who worked on the issue under Bush suggest that he was indifferent, even hostile, in his first year at the department...

...The case is long and nuanced, but these points are relevant: Alexander's policy essentially told schools that they could continue to give the same scholarships to the same students...

...In 1991, on his way to Washington, Alexander sold his Nashville home, purchased one year earlier for $570,000, to a Whittle executive for $977,500...

...Phil Gramm and California Gov...

...As Woody Allen once said, eighty percent of success is just showing up...

...Hi-Tech Lamar The future is a key concept for the Alexander campaign, which prides itself on being the first into cyberspace...

...The question is," says one prominent activist, "is he a smart guy who can tell which way the wind is blowing...

...A lexander's second major decision was more complicated...

...In fact, the evidence is ambiguous...

...The Growing Years Alexander grew up in Maryville, Tennessee, where his mother ran a nursery school and his father was a school principal...

...It's not clear whether he bought below market or sold high...

...It has nothing to do with ideas, or because they're for Newt," a Nashville lawyer said...

...In general, Alexander displays a classic WASP reticence to delve into anything especially emotional, spiritual, or psychological...