'What Will Alexander Do?'

So yesterday afternoon, I take a call from a reporter for NBC News in Washington – so desperate is everyone in DC to know where Sen. Lamar Alexander stands on the Witnesses Question.

To be clear, I have no clue. I haven’t spoken with him in many weeks.

But this week, on Capitol Hill and across much of Tennessee, eyes are now trained on my old boss – not because he is loud on the matter of President Trump’s impeachment but because he has been publicly so silent.

POLITICO magazine put the spotlight on Alexander before the weekend, reporting that other senators on both sides of the aisle are following closely what the Tennessee senator says. This is partly because he is seen as a possible swing vote (most immediately on the procedural question of whether to call witnesses in the Senate trial) but also because of his history of building bridges.

Even I get questions about all this as a former Alexander staffer when he was governor (30-plus years ago) and now as a newspaper columnist with a platform. People come up or write in asking me: “How do you think Lamar will vote on impeachment?” or “Why doesn’t he speak out on Trump’s behavior?” or just “What will Alexander do?” These queries come by phone, email and on the street at least once a day.

“I don’t know” is my usual answer. Some days, I have snapped, “Ask him yourself!” And at least a few have done so. (I know because several have sent me the reply, by now surely a form-letter, that came back in the mail from his office.)

For a few days I thought I could guess the answers, but then decided I was only projecting what I hoped he would do. Then over the weekend came the Bolton Book Bombshell, which appears to have undone (somewhat) the iron-clad GOP position to refuse to call any witnesses.

o

The desperate searching by Washington reporters - like the one who called even me down here in Nashville, thinking Lamar might have blabbed secretly to one of us (he hasn’t) - all of that is understandable on one level. Outside Alexander’s own family, I’m one of a handful of old friends who have known him best, or at least have watched how he has worked over his public life. I’ve also written the closest thing we have as yet to his political biography. My two books on Tennessee’s political history – the Coup and Crossing the Aisle – tell many stories about many people, but the story of Alexander’s remarkable career runs like a river through it all.

In the impeachment case now, except for its extraordinary scale, I can imagine Alexander doing generally what he’s always done on great policy questions – working quietly toward a solution, usually with a preferred outcome, building consensus without fanfare, working both sides of the partisan aisle, behind the scenes, and keeping his own private tally of who stands where. This was true of his major legislative goals as governor on education, roads, health policy, and also with the major domestic policy breakthroughs in Congress over the past decade, including the needed reform of the war-time “No Child Left Behind” program and passage of the “21st Century Cures Act” (both of which came out of the Senate committee he chairs).

Throughout all that, over 40-plus years, typically Alexander has never grabbed for any premature public credit – knowing there will be plenty to go around once the job is done, after a result is in hand. And, whatever the subject, it’s always a careful process. For the past three year, any senator determined to get good policy enacted, must know that an errant word here or there can send a good bill to oblivion; suddenly this President whose signature you need abruptly won’t sign.

I imagine that’s an especially hard maneuver in today’s Washington – what with the omnivorous 24/7 news coverage (as with the network researcher who phoned even me yesterday), the hair-trigger social media, the rising intolerance across our larger country, and the rampant partisanship now practiced by many (but not all) of the other the politicians.

It’s a job that’s made no easier by the craven Hobson’s Choice that Trump lays on his own party. (My way or the highway – take it or leave it. And if you leave, just know that I and my “base” will vindictively destroy your career.) With Trump, the fear itself is plenty enough if your own political job is more important to you than your principles.

Alexander, in my rather long experience, is not like that. He usually plays a longer, quieter game. It’s his silence that frustrates his friends also. People wonder why everyone isn’t saying all that they might to help remove the unfit Trump from his office, that dreadful human being, so un-wise and un-prepared to be President, who uses shock and distraction with a surgeon’s skill.

But public silence also affords a wisp of maneuvering room for any who may prefer for an ouster to happen.

o

The way the evidence against Trump has mounted up, the longer the tally sheet may stand now with the names of senators who are – privately so far – willing to call witnesses. The true count will not be known until the last day, when every Senator must either announce Yea or Nay.

I expected all this would develop slowly, and then it would happen fast. In the Senate, the notion of strength-in-numbers works both ways.

While the public fuss in DC this week is over “witnesses” and “more evidence,” it seems to me the key facts of Trump’s conduct in office are well known at this point - much of it by the President’s own public statements of the past few months. The key document now is that private tally sheet of senators, which only the shrewdest counters can know. In fact, it was the word “tally” in the news reports of this morning that suggest there’s much new scrambling behind the scenes – and, for me, the word reminded me of Alexander’s history of finding consensus.

Most important now is that when enough senators know in their hearts that no more proof is needed – and thus know which button they will eventually press in service to history – that will be the moment to vote.

o

Speaking of leaders, there’s another relevant item in Alexander’s personal history that comes to mind now.

We should remember that day in March of 2011, when he announced he was stepping away from the GOP’s formal leadership apparatus. He was, at the time, chairman of the Republican Conference Committee, meaning he was No. 3 in the leadership line.

Here’s why that could be noteworthy now: When the President is of the same party, there’s a political straight-jacket that sits on the Senate Majority Leader and his very top-most lieutenants. It’s a duty to support, in lock-step, whatever the White House wants. (This, of course, has played out over the past three years not only in this impeachment imbroglio but on everything from Trump’s judicial nominations to his priorities like the border wall and the separation of families.) Alexander resolved nine years ago to be a good Republican, but not that sort of lieutenant – that particular kind of GOP machine operative and enforcer.

Read his words from the 2011 announcement, explaining why he was stepping away from the internal apparatus:

“…Stepping down from leadership will liberate me to spend more time working for results on the issues I care most about. I want to do more to make the Senate a more effective institution so that it can deal better with serious issues. There are different ways to provide leadership within the Senate. After nine years here, this is how I believe I can now make my greatest contribution. For these same reasons I do not plan to seek a leadership position in the next congress. I said to Tennesseans when I first ran for the Senate that I would serve with conservative principles and an independent attitude. I will continue to serve in that same way. I am a very Republican Republican. I intend to be more, not less, in the thick of resolving serious issues.”

In my mind’s eye, Tennessee’s senior senator is now doing precisely that. At this moment, the serious issue that needs “resolving” is Trump’s removal. It’s a task ill-suited to the formal, monolithic GOP leadership structure of the Senate. The apparatus should perform this work but cannot free itself to do.

Alexander, though, is free to “work the floor” unofficially.

How, in the end, will he vote? We’ll see.

o

There’s one other recurring comment that has come my way, from Tennesseans impatient with Alexander at the moment. They typically mention Howard Baker and Watergate, that time in the early 70s when it was President Nixon who was walking on the razor’s edge, and they will say this:

“Lamar should remember the courage of his own mentor, Senator Baker.”

To that one, I say, “I’m confident he does.”

o