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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Senator Lamar Alexander
thoughts I I can't stop scratching my downtown. Mm, yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown. Some things you'd rather type than say out loud.
- [00:24]
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- [00:35]
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- [01:22]
Public Investing Legal Disclaimer
Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
- [01:32]
Public Investing Advertiser
Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures Professional wrestling
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- [02:39]
Newt Gingrich
Welcome to News World Podcast on the Iheart Podcast Network. The Trump Administration has announced they're suspending a billion $300 million in federal Medicaid payments for California. They apparently have, and I've talked to Mehmetaz, the head of the center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They apparently have had this huge failure to monitor seriously hospices and there is apparently just an enormous amount of theft and corruption. So they've really put the lock down. California has not been responsible and not come back with the information and so they're now being very tough. Although I have to say California receives so many billion dollars in Medicaid money. While it sounds like a lot, and to you and me it is a lot, it's actually a very small part of the total California Medicaid spending. So as in many other areas, California is badly run and has a huge amount of corruption. I think we also should all be concerned that the Stanford Education Opportunity Project showed a drop in US Test scores. The fact is they now show that reading scores are down 83% and math scores are down 70% from last year compared with a decade ago. The declines affect rich districts and poor districts and affects every racial and demographic group. Test scores in low income districts fell the furthest, but even more affluent districts also lost ground. They found that from 2017 to 2019 students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic. And they found that the students test scores, which had been increasing since 1990, stopped rising in the middle of about 2010s. And I have a hunch part of this relates back to the rise of the cell phone and of TikTok and other things where people are amusing themselves without having to go through any kind of studies. Coming up, I'll be joined by Senator Lamar Alexander and we're going to discuss his new book, the Education of a Senator From JFK to Trump.
- [04:52]
Amazon Health AI Advertiser
Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts why
- [04:57]
Personal Story Narrator
did I search the Internet for answers to my cold sore problem? Now I'm stuck down a rabbit hole filled with images of alarmingly graphic sores in various stages of ooze. I can clear my search history, but I can never unsee that.
- [05:15]
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- [05:53]
Public Investing Advertiser
comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public
- [06:39]
Public Investing Legal Disclaimer
Investing Broker Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
- [06:50]
Public Investing Advertiser
Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this
- [06:54]
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- [07:28]
Newt Gingrich
I am really pleased to welcome my guest, my good friend and frankly one of the people I most admire in public life, Senator Lamar Alexander. He served as the Governor of Tennessee from 1979-87, US Secretary of Education from 1991-93 and Senator from Tennessee from 2003 to 2021 where frankly I thought he was a model for what a Senator should be as a House member. The idea that anybody can be a model Senator is a stretch. He's joining me because he has a brand new book which I recommend very highly. The Education of a Senator From JFK to Trump. Lamar, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newt's World.
- [08:11]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Thank you Newt. It's a treat to get to talk with you again.
- [08:14]
Newt Gingrich
You wrote that your years in public life from 1963 to 2021 roughly coincided with an era of American democracy. What stands out to you the most, and why do you think that was an era?
- [08:31]
Senator Lamar Alexander
The summer of 63, I wrangled a job. I was in law school, and one of my Vanderbilt classmates helped me get a job in Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department. And I heard Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech at lunch in late August of that summer. So I served all the way from I have a dream speech until 2021. What I write about is the digital democracy, and I think what the era has been defined by a number of things, but especially by the arrival of social media. I think things really changed about 2008, and we can talk about it, but Facebook, iPhone, other social media arrived about the same time Barack Obama was elected president, and his liberalism put off a lot of people. Then we had the Great Panic Recession. Then President Trump arrived, not as really a cause of what was going on, but as a, I think, a result or a symptom of it. Add to all of that the globalization we had economically, which really disrupted communities. People didn't have steady jobs for the rest of their lives in the same place anymore. And so we went from that kind of era to today's era. And so we've gone from Martin Luther king speech in 1963 to being immersed in this digital democracy, which we have a hard time dealing with.
- [09:58]
Newt Gingrich
When you think back to the Washington that you arrived in and the Washington that you retired from, how much did you think the city had changed physically?
- [10:08]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Not that much. A lot of the same people, same buildings, same spirit. So Washington has a lot of continuity, even with this huge change in the digital democracy that we have.
- [10:22]
Newt Gingrich
I want to go back to how you got here, because you ran once and lost for governor. Your wife gave you the formula that allowed you to win and really win in a way that made you a national figure almost overnight. Can you describe that? I thought your governor's race, as you pointed out, I'd lost twice, and we both finally won the same year. In 78, you going to the governor's mansion and me going off as a lowly freshman in the House. But what was there about that 78 race that was different and that your wife created?
- [10:56]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Well, there were two things, and I suspect maybe you found the same thing. The first thing she said, I'd lost in 1974. People said I was a stuffed shirt. But what she said was, first, when I said I wanted to run again in 78, she said, now wait a Minute, first, you're going to have to tell me why you're running and what you hope to accomplish. In other words, what purpose do you have for all of this before you drag us through this again? And then second, she said, could we have a different campaign mode because people kind of seen me as a stuffed shirt. So we got to thinking about it and she said, you need to be more of yourself. What do you like to do? And we talk like music, like to walk, like to meet people. And so in the end, what we concluded was I would literally walk across Tennessee for six months. I spent the night with 73 different families that I hadn't known before. Along the way, I tried to shake a thousand hands a day. And it really sunk me back into the character, the music, the stories of the state where I, you know, was a seventh generation Tennessee. And I thought I knew a lot about it, but I didn't know that much. And it made me a much better candidate and a much better governor along that route. I wore a red and black plaid shirt because you don't walk, as she said, across the state in a blue suit. We went down to the Freedman's army surplus store and got all the red and black plaid shirts they had that wore a different one every day. And I began auctioning them off. And Gary Reed of Smokey and the Bandit bought one for $500 in Franklin, Tennessee. And I knew I'd arrived.
- [12:30]
Newt Gingrich
That's wild. And then that really became the symbol of you.
- [12:34]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Some people said it was a gimmick, but we've both been in a lot of campaigns. It was much less of a gimmick than the sound bites and press conferences and other things that you do in politics. I mean, basically I was meeting people I hadn't met before. I was spending the night with people I hadn't known before. I was kind of out on my own. It was a really wonderful experience. And even today I run into people who say, you know, you slept in my grandpa's bed when you walked through Granger County. And I know their names, I know their grandpa, I remember who they were.
- [13:07]
Newt Gingrich
Didn't you think it did sort of bring you closer to everyday folks and to that sense of a kind of populism that doesn't have to be angry or negative, but it really does represent just everyday people.
- [13:20]
Senator Lamar Alexander
No, I think you're exactly right. You remember Smokey and the Bandit. All those voters would be Trump voters today. And when Jerry Reed jumped up on the platform with me and he played the guitar and I Played the piano, and we both wore red and black shirts. That to me, meant I was connecting with grassroots people in Tennessee, which is a pretty populous, conservative state. I think the people, the state saw it as sort of a pilgrimage in a way, and appreciated it and enjoyed it and liked it, and it made me a more interesting and a better candidate.
- [13:51]
Newt Gingrich
Well, one of the things you say that you really took out of that experience was a deep focus on job creation, which you did brilliantly. What did you learn on the walk that led you to think creating jobs was a central goal? And then how did you go about creating? Because you were amazingly successful.
- [14:09]
Senator Lamar Alexander
What I realized, which I really hadn't known before, hadn't felt, was we were the third poorest state based on family incomes. Mississippi and Arkansas were below Tennessee. I spent the night on my walk with the Knight family south of Nashville. Lillian Knight was school secretary Las Casas. Her husband Billy was the postmaster. And when her boys had went to bed that night, she said, I'm sad because my twin boys are smart and they'll never find a job around here, and I'll never see my grandchildren. Well, fast forward a few months. I got elected. My first White House dinner was Jimmy Carter. He said, governor's go to Japan and persuade them to make here what they sell here. So, you know, nobody said to me, walking across Tennessee, I sure hope you go to Japan. But I did and met the Nissan people, and they came to Tennessee. Their other choice, by the way, would have been Georgia, because they were looking for a state in the Southeast. And every state north of us did not have a right to work law. So we were centrally located and didn't have a route to work law. That began the movement of the auto industry toward the Southeast. And Tennessee today has a thousand auto parts suppliers when it had one then. But the best part of the story is 25 years after Nissan came to Tennessee, it came right to that community where the Knight family lives. And one of those twin boys that she thought would never get a job was the plant manager of the largest auto and truck plant in North America. Her other son was working there, and the grandson she thought she would never see had just gone to work there. You know, when governors say creating jobs, you know, that kind of gets boring after a while. But if you think of it in terms of the Knight family and Lillian Knight's ability to see your sons and her grandsons, it matters.
- [16:06]
Newt Gingrich
So the hallmark of your style, you actually listened to people and then figured out a way to do something positive.
- [16:14]
Senator Lamar Alexander
You know, I used to say to my colleagues in the Senate, you know, it's hard to get here, it's hard to stay here. And as long as you're here, you might as well try to accomplish something good for the country, you know, which takes working with people you don't always agree with.
- [16:30]
Newt Gingrich
You actually worked in the Nixon White House. You write about Nixon in a way that fits my view, which is a tragedy. But you see him as somebody who actually was very consequential prior to Watergate.
- [16:45]
Senator Lamar Alexander
He was on his way. I worked with 10 presidents, Newt, and was there for two more, JFK and LBJ. Nixon was on his way to being one of the most consequential American presidents. He had opened our America to China. He had presided over the end of the Vietnam War. He'd ended the draft. He passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. He did a whole number of things. Bryce Harlow, for whom I worked in the White house, I was 29. He was president Nixon's first appointee. And I was lucky enough, on the recommendation of Bud Wilkinson, to get a job. So I was sitting there, 50ft from the Oval Office at a desk right next to Bryce Harlow, learning from him, getting my PhD. He had worked for Eisenhower. He had seen other presidents. He said he thought Nixon was the most capable intellectually of any of the presidents with whom he had worked. And Watergate was a real tragedy because Nixon lied about it and lost the presidency. And Bryce Harlow wrote me a letter later and told me if he'd announced Watergate, said it was a terrible mistake, fired everybody who had anything to do with it, that it would have been a lot of pain, but it would have saved his presidency. And that was a good lesson for me. If you make a mistake, announce it and accept the consequences and go on.
- [18:11]
Newt Gingrich
I had no idea the depth of your experiences prior to public office. You had been actively involved as a Tennessean and had remarkable experience with Senator Howard Baker, who I thought was one of the amazing leaders in the U.S. senate. But you really had very good mentors in that sense.
- [18:33]
Senator Lamar Alexander
One of the things about writing a memoir is some people say, you know, the first casualty in a memoir is the truth. But to me, it helped put my life in perspective. And I realized how blessed or how fortunate I've been. My first mentor was John Minor Wisdom, who was a Federal Circuit court judge from New Orleans. Great political leader, fought to build a two party system in Louisiana when Huey Long was in charge. He was ready to go armed against Huey Long at a time when there were probably 150 Republicans in Louisiana. As a result he ended up on the federal appeals court. And he and John Brown and Elbert Tuttle, Georgia and Judge Reeves from Florida presided over the desegregation of the South. So I learned courage from him, politics from him. Then Howard Baker, who helped build a two party system in Tennessee. And then as I mentioned to begin with Bryce Harlow, who at the time I got a job with him was probably the most respected person in Washington DC. I mean, he had worked for Eisenhower, worked for lbj. There was a moment right after Nixon's election, it was in the transition in the Pierre Hotel in 1968 and Harlow was the one everybody knew who had been appointed. And Lyndon Johnson had called him, mad as he could be because Nixon had said something about foreign policy. And Johnson was shouting at Harlow saying, doesn't he know there's one President at a time? And with that, Harlow's secretary came in and said, Mr. Harlow, President Eisenhower is on the phone and wants to speak to you. Now Harlow had been Eisenhower's favorite staff member and his liaison in the 60s with Washington. And a moment later, Larry Higby, who was President Nixon's, one of his assistants, ran in the room and said, Mr. Harlow, Mr. Harlow, President elect Nixon wants you in his office immediately. So he had the President on the phone, the former President holding, and the new President demanding to see him. So that's the guy I got to work for for 18 months in 1969 and 70. I got my PhD in politics and government and how to do things the right way.
- [20:44]
Newt Gingrich
I knew Bryce Harlow a little bit, but in some ways he's the formative person in your own mind. When you think back to having learned the business, I get the sense that he really was the guy that most taught you the core principles you operate off of.
- [21:03]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Yes, a lot. Some of them are pretty simple, but they're pretty important. I would sit there and younger White House aides would come and ask him for advice. And the question he most asked them was what would be the right thing to do? And he would tell him a story of Eisenhower in a Cabinet meeting with everybody at loggerheads over what to do. The Defense Department saying we need to do this. And the Secretary of State said we can't do that because of this. And finally Eisenhower asked, well, what would be the right thing to do? And they all agreed. And Eisenhower said, well then that's what we'll do. And he sent Hagerty out to tell the press. Well, that sounds naive and unsophisticated. But Eisenhower was not naive and unsophisticated. I mean, he'd won a war, and he was a president of the United States. And if he could make decisions that way, I suspect the rest of us might too.
- [21:56]
Newt Gingrich
When we come back, we're going to discuss what Lamar learned working alongside Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. bush.
- [22:05]
Amazon Health AI Advertiser
Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts why
- [22:10]
Personal Story Narrator
did I search the Internet for answers to my cold sore problem? Now I'm stuck down a rabbit hole filled with images of alarmingly graphic sores in various stages of ooze. I can clear my search history, but I can never unsee that.
- [22:28]
Amazon Health AI Advertiser
Don't go down the rabbit hole. Amazon Health AI gets you the right care fast. Healthcare just got less painful.
- [22:35]
True Nature Meats Advertiser
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- [23:06]
Public Investing Advertiser
comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public
- [23:52]
Public Investing Legal Disclaimer
Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
- [24:03]
Public Investing Advertiser
Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this
- [24:07]
Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship Advertiser
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- [24:42]
Newt Gingrich
You talked about how Jimmy Carter encouraged you as governor to go to Japan. But when you think about the presidents you actually worked with, like Carter, Reagan, George H.W. bush, Clinton and Obama, how do you reflect on them? They're obviously all strong personalities. You don't climb your way to the presidency in the American system without being pretty strong.
- [25:05]
Senator Lamar Alexander
No, that's true. One of the things I've learned is that the difference between running for governor and running for president is the difference between 8th grade basketball and the NBA Finals. So all of them had a lot of characteristics. But to briefly talk, Carter had a big smile, not much of a sense of humor. He came to Washington not knowing much about it and he brought with him people who didn't know much about it. And he got in trouble immediately. His single mindedness as an engineer helped him toward the end with the Panama Canal and his Middle east treaty. Reagan was the person who fit the presidency. The best of the 10 that I worked with. At first I didn't think so. I thought he was too old. I was the youngest governor at the time I met him. Too old, maybe too conservative, too western. But I was quickly disabused of that. He was comfortable in his own skin. He was a good delegator. And perhaps more than anything, he did what Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about with Lincoln. He brought in a team of rivals to help him. His vice president was George H.W. bush, who ran against him. His chief of staff, Jim Baker, Bush's campaign manager. Later his chief of staff, Howard Baker, who tried to run against him. And these men, unlike Carter's assistants, were. Were broad gauge. They'd seen a lot, they were less likely to make mistakes and they helped Reagan through difficult times. Clinton was the best politician. That was your time. He was an extraordinary politician and became a pretty effective president. George W. Bush, I would say, was the most normal of them all. And I mean that as a compliment. He wasn't a Rhodes scholar, president, Harvard law reviewer, war hero, any of that. But he was comfortable with having a grandfather for senator, a father for president, a brother for governor. He treated being born on third base as an opportunity to steal home instead of an excuse for a therapy session. And he retained his empathy all during his Presidency. I remember in 2002, he came to Tennessee, Upper East Tennessee, to campaign for me when I was elected to the Senate. It was last Saturday in November, and when he got up on the stage, I thought his eyes were red. It turned out he'd been to see a family in Elizabeth of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. He stayed with him for two hours. He felt personally responsible for that. He never said a word about it. And his staff later told me that over six years he made 500 visits like that to 1500 family members because he wanted to do that. And it often brought him to tears when he did it. But he never called attention to himself as a result of those visits.
- [28:00]
Newt Gingrich
Wow, I did not know that. That's really a remarkable story. Now you end up as the president of the University of Tennessee, and when somebody asked you about what was the hardest job, as I understand, he just broke up laughing and said, you've obviously never been a university president.
- [28:18]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Yeah, that's right. I get asked that all the time. And you, you're a professor. I mean, you know about that. What's harder? Governor, cabinet member, senator, university president? I'd say, obviously you've never been a university president or you wouldn't ask a stupid question like that.
- [28:33]
Newt Gingrich
What made it so challenging?
- [28:35]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Well, part of it was my own inadequacy, I think. I think my temperament wasn't very good for it. I'm a result oriented, Moses kind of person. Here's a problem, here's a strategy, let's get something done. And I remember the faculty Senate visited me in my first couple of weeks at University of Tennessee, and they said, well, we have a concern. I said, well, what is that? He said, we think that you may think that the result is more important than the process. I said, well, I am result oriented. And they said, well, we think the process is more important than the result. Governor Tom Kane, who became a university president, said that the faculty often thinks that an order by a president of the university is a request to form a commission. I wasn't as well suited to it, and I mean, I love the university and I thought it was important to the state's future, but it was harder for me than my other jobs doing
- [29:30]
Newt Gingrich
that, though, having been president of the university. When President George H.W. bush asked you to serve as Education secretary, did you feel that having been at the university gave you a more clear insight into what needed to be done?
- [29:46]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Well, yes, and how to do it, because Senator McKellar from Tennessee, our first senator, said the Senate is a lot like A university. And if you think about that, senators and professors can serve a long time and do about whatever they want to do as long as they can keep getting reelected. So there's a lot of that, plus I learned a lot. I saw this may seem unimportant to some people, but I realized how burdensome the FAFSA was, the federal aid application that 20 million families fill out every year to get a student grant or loan. And I spent 15 years trying to fix that as a senator. And just this week, the Government Accountability Office said it was finally fixed. But I couldn't fix it until I was chairman of the Senate Education Committee. And I worked with Bobby Scott and Patty Murray and others, Democrats and Republicans, Tim Scott from South Carolina. And we took a 108 page form and reduced it to a couple dozen questions that are easy to fill out so it's not the big obstacle to college that it used to be. So I learned that as a university president and was able to do something about it as a senator.
- [30:56]
Newt Gingrich
You also developed a program called America 2000. Describe what you were trying to achieve, and you make a clear distinction that it was a national strategy, not a federal bureaucracy.
- [31:10]
Senator Lamar Alexander
That's right. That was under H.W. bush, and I was the new Education Secretary. He'd promised to be the education president and wasn't getting the job done. And so he brought somebody new in. And it was an effort to provide presidential leadership, state by state, community by community, to improve schools. In fact, Jack Kemp said, when we were all working on it, that he thought that should be the name of Bush's entire domestic agenda. And I agree with that because I remember going to the speech that he made to the Congress right after the Gulf War in 1991, when his approval rating was 93%. And I had wished that he'd spent five minutes on the war and then said, now let's turn our attention to home and show that we can do at home what we did overseas and call it America 2000. I think he might have been reelected if he had done that. But what happened after that was that Clinton and George W. And Obama gradually turned America 2000 into sort of a national school board. And by 2015, we were trying to fix no Child Left Behind. And you talked about that and wrote about it. The Wall Street Journal said it was the biggest devolution of power from Washington to the states in 25 years because we sent almost all the K through 12 school decisions back to states and classroom teachers from Washington, D.C. where they gradually accumulated under this. So called National School Board that I didn't like.
- [32:49]
Newt Gingrich
I don't know if you remember this, but in 1986 your term as governor was about to come up and I called both you and Pete dupont to urge you to run for the Senate, and I got exactly the same reaction, which was having been a governor and having actually made decisions every day that mattered, the idea of sitting in the Senate and listening to these guys talk has zero interest for me.
- [33:17]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Well, you know what Mitch McConnell says about that? He says a senator who has been a governor who says he prefers being a senator, will lie about other things. Henry Bellman was a governor of Oklahoma, then a senator, then a governor, and he said being a senator was about as exciting as watching a stump rot. A lot of governors are unhappy in the Senate and then a lot of senators aren't very good governors because they come home and try to be ideological in a job that requires a lot of pragmatism.
- [33:50]
Newt Gingrich
Coming up, we're going to discuss his time in the Senate, how relationships drive legislation, and whether he believes the country can still come together when it matters most.
- [34:00]
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- [34:06]
Personal Story Narrator
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- [36:02]
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- [36:37]
Newt Gingrich
I thought you probably had the right answer in 80, but you had grown and you had in a sense become more comfortable suffering fools by the time you ran for the Senate and you were just really comfortable being a senator.
- [36:52]
Senator Lamar Alexander
I had a higher tolerance for the way the Senate works than most governors. I remember going to Mike Johans, who was a great governor of Nebraska, Cabinet member. I wanted him to run for a position in the Republican leadership in the Senate. He listened for a while and said, why would anyone stay here? And he left after one term. The difference is, as a governor, the job is sort of like Moses. Let's go this way. Here's a strategy. Let me see if I can persuade half the people I'm right. The Senate leadership to get anything done is more like being a drum major of a band. I mean, you have to recruit the marchers, you have to line them up, you have to select the music, you have to try to keep them from walking into the ditch. Sometimes you have to let a couple of soloists march out front and by the time you're there, you can't tell who was responsible for getting you where you wanted to go. But it's a completely different leadership style. But it still can work.
- [37:50]
Newt Gingrich
How much do you think, having worked for Howard Baker, who really was a master of the Senate, how much do you think you picked up things from Howard that made you a lot more effective senator?
- [38:04]
Senator Lamar Alexander
A lot. For example, he said, be an eloquent listener. Now what he meant by that was sometimes what someone says to you is not what they really are thinking. Another thing he told me was, learn to count. You may remember Trent, your friend and colleague, and I ran for whip in 2006 or something like that. He beat me by one vote. And I sat down with him at the Republican luncheon and told my colleagues that I was going to write 27 thank you notes for 24 votes. But Howard had always taught me, learn to count. But what may be 25 votes today might be 24 votes tomorrow. And another one, he said, was the other fellow might be right. You have to deal with the opposite party. You've got to remember that. I remember when we worked on the bill to fix no Child Left Behind, I was the new chairman of the Education Committee. I said, okay, everyone, do it this way. I'll propose a bill. And I said to Patty Murray, the Senator Democrat from Washington, who's a senior Democrat on the committee, I said, all right, you all can amend it, and that'll be a bipartisan bill. She said, no, we won't. She said, we'll write it together. I thought she was completely wrong. I thought it was my prerogative as chairman to present a bill and then we'd vote on it and that would be a bipartisan process. But I thought about it and said, okay, we'll do it your way. In other words, I said, the lady might be right, and because we worked together, we got a result. That was the one. I just talked about sending all these decisions back to states that President Obama signed and called a Christmas miracle. So sometimes I learned from Howard that be an eloquent listener, and sometimes you have to acknowledge that the other person might be right or pretend that they're right so that you can get a result.
- [39:54]
Newt Gingrich
You wrote that the essence of the United States Senate is relationships. It's remarkably different than the House because it's a smaller institution. People come for six years at a time, and it has a unique history of its own. Where did you learn the centrality of relationships as a way of being in the Senate?
- [40:16]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Well, I had watched the Senate as we talked. I started out early. I worked for Howard Baker in 1967, 68. Then I went back to the Senate to help him in 1977 when he was elected leader for a few months, and then I went back as Education Secretary. So I'd seen how it worked. And I watched Senator Baker, especially his relationships with other senators, how he treated them, his courtesy toward them. For example, he would go to their offices rather than require them to come to his. And when I became a senator, you will appreciate this, if I were chairman of the Education Committee in the Senate, I would call my counterpart in the House and ask if I could come see him or her just as a courtesy call. And so few senators ever did that, that it, in the end made a much better relationship. That often produced a result. That's a relationship. Another way I worked on that, we had Honey and I, my wife, we probably had 60 Senate couples visit us at our home here in the foothills of the smoky Mountains over 18 years for the weekend. And that included a lot of Republican senators and spouses, but it also included the Schumers and Sheldon Whitehouse and Patty Murray and her husband, Democrats. We didn't talk about politics. We talked about grandchildren, and we took walks and ate meals. And the idea was that if we got to know each other, we might trust each other. And if we trusted each other, we might find one or two things that we could agree on and work on, which I did with Patty Murray often, even though she was a very. Is a very liberal Democrat. But I could work with her. And because she has such credentials within the Democratic caucus, if she agreed with me, she could usually get even the most liberal Democrats to come along with a bill that we agreed on.
- [42:10]
Newt Gingrich
Do you think that it's harder in the current environment to have that kind of bipartisanship?
- [42:18]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Yes, it is. Charlie Munger, who used to work with Warren Buffett before he died, said, show me the incentive and I'll show you the result. And there's no incentive today for getting result. The incentive with our social media. I mean, the evil algorithm just draws to our devices things we agree with. And so we're not accustomed to, to working with people that we don't agree with. And there's not a lot of political reward for solving problems, but it can still be done. I learned just this week that Steve Daines, Republican from Montana, and Angus King, Independent from Maine, who sides with the Democrats, have got 60 co sponsors for the Great American Outdoors act renewal, which we passed with President Trump's strong support in 2020. In an unholy alliance, some people said, of 800 environmental groups and Trump. And it was the most important conservation bill since Teddy Roosevelt. So it can still be done. It's just harder in this digital democracy that we have, where people are so accustomed to going to the extremes, having
- [43:30]
Newt Gingrich
already been governor, president of the university, and secretary of education. Were you sort of a super freshman when you arrived because of the range
- [43:40]
Senator Lamar Alexander
of your background in a way I was. But the main reason for that was because I knew about 26 or seven of the senators already. In a body that's based upon relationships, that really matters. For example, Trent Lott had been my roommate in Washington when we were both young. In 1969, I served as governor with several of the others. You and I had a meeting here at BlackBerry farm in 1985 that had three House members and three governors. Bill Frist and Ms. McConnell had. Senator Baker had told me in 1970 out to get to know that smart young legislative assistant for Marlo Cook. That was the new senator from Kentucky and that was Mitch McConnell. So having these relationships already and knowing how the Senate worked gave me a head start.
- [44:33]
Newt Gingrich
Let me ask one last thing. You and I share the distinction of having run for president and lost. What did you learn from that experience?
- [44:41]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Well, as I said earlier, the difference between running for governor and running for president is the difference between eighth grade basketball and the NBA Finals. I tried twice. I did pretty well in 96 in New Hampshire. I tried a second time and it lasted about as long as the Wright brothers first flight. And when I dropped out, I said the problem is all media and Money. This was 1999. I said, if we're not careful, in 2004 we'll have Donald Trump versus the latest Powerball winner with Cher as the independent candidate. And everybody laughed and I didn't even know Donald Trump. I just picked that up as an example. But I learned the importance of media and money in presidential races and how difficult they are. That's what I learned.
- [45:37]
Newt Gingrich
I couldn't agree with you more, Lamar. I want to thank you first of all for joining me as it has been since I first met you. It's always a joy to hang out with you. You're one of the great of American politics and you just know so much and have done so much. Your new book, the Education of a Senator From JFK to Trump is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. And I am confident it's going to be well worth everybody who cares about understanding our self government to spend some time with you through your book.
- [46:10]
Senator Lamar Alexander
Thank you so much Newt, and thank you for your career. I've watched it and been a part of it and walked alongside you for nearly 50 years. Sometimes with difference of opinion, but always with great respect.
- [46:24]
Newt Gingrich
Thank you to my guest, Senator Lamar Alexander. Newts World is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnesy Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on substack@gingrich360.net I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtwork.
- [47:03]
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- [47:19]
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- [47:53]
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- [47:58]
Senator Lamar Alexander
You got it coming. This is total non stop action.
- [48:02]
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- [48:11]
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- [48:39]
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