Alexander's Moment
BROOKS, DAVID
Alexander's Moment by David Brooks Until now, Lamar Alexander has been the Canada of politics. He's got some radical ideas-like ending the welfare state or adding another branch to the...
...as the former governor of a state he made a magnet for overseas investment, he believes he can hit from strength...
...This inoffensiveness can become offensive and explains why so many reporters are hostile to him...
...Alexander is basing his post-New Hampshire strategy on the emergence of the New South, or what he calls the "progressive South...
...If the Buchanan mob carries pitchforks and assault weapons, then Alexander is counting on a counter-force in minivans...
...That's because Alexander likes Buchanan...
...The way to address those anxieties, Alexander believes, is to offer a voucher-based job-training scheme so that someone who lost a job as, say, a computer programmer could get work as something else...
...And his call for Dole to get out of the race on primary night in New Hampshire was presumptuous and embarrassing...
...He has to beat Bob Dole in Arizona or South Carolina, the two states in which he has enough money to be competitive...
...The Buchanan surge solves one of the central contradictions of the Alexander campaign...
...Alexander's mantra over the past few days has been in support of free trade and less regulation, not exactly the "fresh ideas" he brags about...
...Alexander came out swinging at a press conference the morning after, with a much tougher tone than he had used the night before...
...For Alexander, it would be "Drive to the sound of Zamfir on the pan flute...
...Moreover, he doesn't directly address the problem that Buchanan has put at the center of the agenda-wage stagnation...
...He went on to a successful rally in South Carolina, which drew four times as many people as expected and generated a good deal of spontaneous check writing...
...Goo-goo Republicans are forever warning about the dangers of isolationism or protectionism, the sort of point that wins pious nods at Chamber of Commerce dinners...
...Trashing Buchananism also keeps Alexander focused on policy substance, not political strategy...
...Their friendship goes back 25 years, to when they were both working in the Nixon White House...
...That's a role that suits him...
...The gimmickry has been toned down...
...It is safe, but it is not a positive agenda...
...Alexander has posed as an outsider, wearing those phony flannel shirts and overdoing the tinny populist rhetoric...
...It appeals primarily to the kind of Republican businessman who wants to bring efficient management techniques to the schools or put a computer in every classroom (an Alexander project when he was secretary of education...
...Similarly, bashing Buchanan is an extremely polite thing to be seen doing...
...Even in the heat of the campaign, he seems to be always thinking about how such and such a statement will play out in the media...
...it distracts from his alleged vision for America...
...If he's going to discover a way to generate enthusiasm, he's probably going to have to learn at least one thing from Pat Buchanan: how to serve up raw meat...
...He believes there is now a majority of southern Republican voters who, far from being the Bubbas of old, welcome international investment-suburban cosmopolitans rather than isolationist peasants...
...But fighting Buchanan, he can now run as a mainstream Republican...
...He's wearing dark ties...
...He's got some radical ideas-like ending the welfare state or adding another branch to the Pentagon-but everything he touches turns boring...
...Goo-goo Republicanism of this sort is Alexander's weakness...
...Pat Buchanan calls on his followers to "Lock and load...
...The Alexander problem the Buchanan surge hasn't solved is his utter inoffensiveness...
...Still, even Canada gets its great moment every century or so, and the next two weeks are Alexander's time in the sun...
...For Alexander, it would be "Chip and putt...
...His problem is that he still can sound like a Gerber Republican, so mainstream that he comes off predigested and bland...
...His life seems to have been constructed to win universal admiration, rather than deep admiration from a specific group...
...Rather, they are worried about losing their jobs...
...He's beginning to appear presidential...
...If you didn't just fall asleep over the words "voucher-based job-training scheme," you are exactly the sort of person Alexander wants on his fund-raising list...
...He doesn't label Buchanan extremist or intolerant, as Dole does...
...He has about 14 days to prove that he is the real alternative to Pat Buchanan...
...But he is not trying to scare the bejeebers out of voters...
...Even more than the other candidates, Alexander has too often sounded like a consultant more than a candidate...
...His "ABC-Alexander Beats Clinton" theme not only fails to sway voters...
...By the ides of March, Alexander will either be closing up shop or riding a tidal wave to the nomination...
...On the night of the New Hampshire primary, Alexander met with William J. Bennett, guru Mike Murphy, and the rest of his campaign brass and concluded that the way to win mainstream Republican support was to beat up on Pat Buchanan more effectively than Bob Dole...
...Alexander is hitting Buchanan on protectionism foremost...
...People in the Alexander campaign argue that most voters aren't actually frustrated by their stagnant pay packet...
...Buchanan screams, "Ride to the sound of the guns...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 24
