Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Lamar Alexander - A Statesman's Warning About Where American Politics Is Headed

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Interview Only w/ Lamar Alexander - A Statesman's Warning About Where American Politics Is Headed · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: so use that code well. Joining me now is perhaps
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  Speaker 1: one of full politicians I've ever personally known, and I
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  Speaker 1: feel like I have watched at least the second half
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of his career up close and personal because of a
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  Speaker 1: mutual friend that Lamar Alexander and I have had over
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the decades, a mentor of mine, I know, an intellectual
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  Speaker 1: partner of his, the late great Doug Bailey. But here's
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  Speaker 1: my guest, it's the Mar Alexander and his new book,
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  Speaker 1: The Education of a Senator Governor. Is that the title
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  Speaker 1: you prefer the most? That's always my person I prefer Lamar. Well,
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  Speaker 1: there you go. But the joke used to be every
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: former governor that was in the Senate was miserable. How
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: did you not become miserable?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you're right about on your point, as Mitch McConnell says,
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  Speaker 2: any any senator who's been a governor tells you that
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  Speaker 2: he prefers being a senator, will lie about other things,
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  Speaker 2: and a lot of them have been miserable. Henry Bellman
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  Speaker 2: from Oklahoma's, you know, was governor. Then he was in
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  Speaker 2: the Senate two terms, and he went back to governor.
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  Speaker 2: He said, being in the Senate is about as exciting
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  Speaker 2: as what watching a stump rot. But the why your
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: question was why did I get along with it? It doesn't fit.
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't fit my instincts. My instincts are to be governor,
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  Speaker 2: and which is kind of a Moses job. You know,
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  Speaker 2: let's go this way and help a strategy and persuade
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  Speaker 2: half the people. You're right, But my advantage was I'd
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  Speaker 2: seen the Senate. I've worked in it for Howard Baker.
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  Speaker 2: Then I came back and worked in it for a
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  Speaker 2: few months for Howard Baker when he was the leader.
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  Speaker 2: Then I was, you know, education secretaries. I had to
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  Speaker 2: work with the Congress, and the Senate is based almost
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  Speaker 2: solely on relationships and when I arrived at the Senate
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  Speaker 2: at the advanced age of sixty two, I probably knew
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: twenty five twenty six of the senators. So if you
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  Speaker 2: have that kind of relationships and a place that works
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: on relationships, that's a big advantage. So I was able
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  Speaker 2: to adapt.
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  Speaker 1: There's something in my memory bank that says that our
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: mutual friend had relayed to me that when you first
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: got there, you weren't very impressed with the senator some
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of your colleagues. But I get the impression that that
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: your impression of your colleagues improved over time.
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  Speaker 2: That's you know, both of that's true. You know, the
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  Speaker 2: Senate is like any other group of one hundred people
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  Speaker 2: in the country, except it has a lot of very interesting,
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  Speaker 2: talented people, more than one might think. But there are
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  Speaker 2: always eight or ten senators who are better than the
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: other eighty eight or ninety. And that's probably what I noticed,
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  Speaker 2: is that they're just always are some who are leaders
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  Speaker 2: or who have skills, who have a sense of purpose
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  Speaker 2: and get things done. I mean the Howard Baker's, the
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  Speaker 2: ever Dirksons, the Ted Kidney's, people like that.
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  Speaker 1: McCain was one, Well, I remember you say that about
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  Speaker 1: Ted Kennedy. And I don't think you said it very
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  Speaker 1: publicly at the time, but he was one of the
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  Speaker 1: more interesting people in the Senate. And you're like, well,
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  Speaker 1: I got to this place, why is a liberal Democrat
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  Speaker 1: one of the more interesting people to work with?
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  Speaker 2: And that's true. But you know when I ran again,
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  Speaker 2: you know, when I ran for the Senate in two
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  Speaker 2: thousand and two, I used to I was running to
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  Speaker 2: succeed Fred Thompson, and I would I would tell the people,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: I would say, if you elect my opponent, the Democrat,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: the first thing he'll do is he'll go over and
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: pick up friend Thompson's desk and he'll sit it down
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  Speaker 2: between Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy and make it one
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  Speaker 2: vote harder for George W. Bush to lead our country.
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  Speaker 2: So I read against Ted Kennedy, and he stood at
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  Speaker 2: the back of the Senate and fulminated, you know, in
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  Speaker 2: a loud voice, on all these liberal things. But here's
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  Speaker 2: an example of how he did things. When I made
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  Speaker 2: my maiden address about American history and Civics teachers, he
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  Speaker 2: was there and he scurried around the Senate while I
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  Speaker 2: was talking. He got twenty Democratic co sponsors for the
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  Speaker 2: Bill I was introducing, and then he helped me pass it.
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  Speaker 2: So he was that way the whole time he was there.
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  Speaker 2: When I was there, he was as effective as any
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  Speaker 2: other senator at actually getting things done, and he knew
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  Speaker 2: how to make his point, to keep his to keep
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  Speaker 2: his people happy, and then then he would go to
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  Speaker 2: work with Republicans and try to get a result.
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  Speaker 1: I want to go back to your early days as governor.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's a story that well, they did make
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  Speaker 1: a movie about it. I guess you got to help
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  Speaker 1: on that front. But I don't think people know this
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  Speaker 1: story very well. And it was I was glad to
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  Speaker 1: read your account of it. I don't think i'd always
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  Speaker 1: gotten Bailey's account. I had never gotten your account. But
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  Speaker 1: this was wild. A governor you were succeeding was selling
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  Speaker 1: pardons up until the last days in office.
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  Speaker 2: Well that was right. I mean, it's hard for people
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  Speaker 2: to believe today, but it.
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  Speaker 1: Really that a chief executive would sell pardons. Yeah, I know,
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  Speaker 1: it's really hard to believe.
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  Speaker 2: Lamar, Well, we're.
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  Speaker 1: Not baiting you.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not bading you by going there. We're in nineteen
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  Speaker 2: seventy nine. I just been elected governor. I'm a Republican.
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  Speaker 2: Tennessee is still very democratic state.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody, what were you the first Republican governors?
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  Speaker 2: No, in nineteen seventy Winfield. Before that, it was nineteen twenty,
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  Speaker 2: so I was we were just in transition still. Most
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  Speaker 2: everybody to state capital was a Democrat. All the people
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  Speaker 2: I would be working with, and the governor's office. The
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  Speaker 2: governor was selling partons for case. The FBI had had
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  Speaker 2: tapes of this, and the U s Attorney called me
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  Speaker 2: up three days before I was to be sworn in
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  Speaker 2: and called me up on a Wednesday morning and said,
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  Speaker 2: I'm calling not as the US Attorney but as a
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  Speaker 2: Tennesseean to ask you to take office early, because we
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  Speaker 2: have evidence the governor is about to release more prisoners
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  Speaker 2: who paid cash for their release. Well on two nights before,
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  Speaker 2: he had just released fifty one, including many who had
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  Speaker 2: paid cash for release. And so I put the phone
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  Speaker 2: down and I said, I'll call you back. I'll put
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  Speaker 2: the phone down because I want to make sure one
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  Speaker 2: the prank. And I called him back and he was
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  Speaker 2: a Democrat. And by five o'clock that afternoon, after a
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  Speaker 2: lot of negotiation back and forth, the state Attorney General
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  Speaker 2: ruled that it was constitutional and legal. And uh I
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  Speaker 2: was sworn in his governor three days early, and the
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  Speaker 2: Democratic governor was Houston. He later went to jail for
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  Speaker 2: selling whiskey licenses.
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  Speaker 1: How did how was that legal? How did they they
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  Speaker 1: just did it? I mean, I'm what was the what
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  Speaker 1: was the provision in the constitution? Did the legislature have
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  Speaker 1: to go along?
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  Speaker 2: Well, there was some dispute about it. But in Tennessee,
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  Speaker 2: the the state attorney general was appointed by the Supreme Court,
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  Speaker 2: and his rulings of the have the rule of almost
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  Speaker 2: the rule of a of a court. He was he
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  Speaker 2: was a Democrat. He was involved in all the discussions
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  Speaker 2: and he interpreted the constitutional provisions and the state laws
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  Speaker 2: governing when you swear in the governor to to to
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  Speaker 2: allow me to be s warning three days before the
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  Speaker 2: scheduled swearing out on Saturday. Now, later on one of the
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  Speaker 2: one of the Supreme Court members said he didn't think
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  Speaker 2: that was good law.
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  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, do you think if that was something that
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  Speaker 1: that the governor had challenged he just chose not to
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  Speaker 1: challenge it. He didn't challenge me.
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  Speaker 2: He would be out anyway in three days. But uh
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  Speaker 2: and and he was in deep trouble. I mean the
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  Speaker 2: the to show you how far this had gone. The
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  Speaker 2: US attorney who had called me had been part of
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  Speaker 2: the investigation of the governor's staff that was selling partons.
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  Speaker 2: They were down in Memphis at a hotel room, and he said,
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  Speaker 2: let's try hil Mary. So they had the They had
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  Speaker 2: the person who was who was the asking the questions,
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  Speaker 2: the who was set up to ask the governor's staff.
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  Speaker 2: He said, how much would it cost to spring James
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  Speaker 2: earl Ray. James Earl Ray was Martin Luther King's Murlin.
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  Speaker 2: My gosh, he was brushing mountain and the and the
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  Speaker 2: governor's staff guy who was selling pardons said, hmm, that's
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  Speaker 2: a tough one. He said, what about seventy five thousand
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  Speaker 2: dollars for an escape? So that's what we're And they
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  Speaker 2: had all this on video. So here I'm presented with
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: where you where you take office three days early? And
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  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, we don't do that in the United States, right,
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  Speaker 2: you know, we passed power peaceably. I knew enough to
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: know that. And on the other hand, if I didn't
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  Speaker 2: do it, the governor might empty the prison. So he
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  Speaker 2: had the complete power to do that. There's no recourse
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  Speaker 2: to a presidential or a gubernatorial pardon, you're out. You're out.
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  Speaker 2: So that's what I had to weigh, and so I
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  Speaker 2: wanted to make sure that I had the entire Democratic
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  Speaker 2: establishment with me at the time I was sworn in,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Chief Justice stare or the Secretary of State.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: The Atturnment General made his ruling and we announced it together.
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting, that's a that's a heck of
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: a honeymoon you ended up being able to have. Do
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you think as if it allowed you to immediately hit
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the ground running because you sort of for you you
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: forged these bipartisan relationships literally in fire.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think of it as a bipartisan boot camp.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, we didn't really know each other, and we
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: had to absolutely trust each other and not miscommunicate with
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  Speaker 2: each other. Then ever it was over, we had to
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: not take credit and say well I won, he lost,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: he lost. I one. We didn't do any of that,
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  Speaker 2: and so for for a day we had that bipartisan
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  Speaker 2: boot camp, and it really did make a difference over
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  Speaker 2: the next eight years my working with a Democratic legislature.
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  Speaker 2: You know, better roads, better schools, better jobs, family incomes
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  Speaker 2: went Upstates confidence improved and and that was a big
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  Speaker 2: part of the reason for it.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I want to talk a little bit about
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  Speaker 1: your time as governor, because you were part of this
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  Speaker 1: group of Southern governors, Republicans and Democrats that I feel
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  Speaker 1: like was sort of the that brought the South out
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  Speaker 1: of the fifties. I don't know how to put it,
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  Speaker 1: but it was sort of the quote unquote new South,
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  Speaker 1: a reinvigoration into public education, sort of trying to turn
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  Speaker 1: the page from the from the divisiveness of the Civil
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  Speaker 1: Rights era and sort of move to that. It was
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Riley in South Carolina, yourself, Bill Clinton, and particularly on education.
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  Speaker 1: It was on that issue where I felt like there
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  Speaker 1: was a lot of cooperation best practices between those so
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  Speaker 1: between the Southern governors. Am I over interpreting that or
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  Speaker 1: is that? Is that that the experience you had?
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  Speaker 2: No, You're exactly right. I mean, and we were elected
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: the same day. I mean, Clinton right Arkansas, Riley in
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  Speaker 2: in South Carolina, Bob Graham in Florida.
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  Speaker 1: Bob Graham was another one.
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  Speaker 2: William Winter was already in Mississippi, and we worked together,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, we were Florida was a little better shape,
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  Speaker 2: but the rest of us hear about the same place.
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  Speaker 1: I ask, you had really done a lot.
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  Speaker 2: I think I had more money, more people, that kind
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  Speaker 2: of thing. But Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi the three poor states.
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  Speaker 2: So we worked on what to do about it, and
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  Speaker 2: we worked together even though we were of different parties.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, what was I bring this up because I think
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  Speaker 1: one of the you know, one of the bigger issues
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  Speaker 1: we don't talk about is is I think we haven't
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  Speaker 1: rethought our public school system. It's basically the same setup
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: we came up with over one hundred years now, and
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it's clear that this needs at best updating and maybe
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: total transformation rethinking. And you know, I'm not crazy about
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the silofaication that we've done of public education. In my
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: home state of Florida, for instance, we have a four
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: tiered system in Miami Dade County. If you're really wealthy,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: there's the privates. If you're got parents that really pay attention,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: they can find the right charge or find the right
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: magnet school. But if you, you know, maybe your parents
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: are you know, working two jobs and they can't, and
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're just at the school in
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  Speaker 1: your neighborhood and you may not be in the best school.
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  Speaker 1: And so while school choice exists, it's it's in some
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: ways it's confusing, it's it's hard. And then there's a
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  Speaker 1: part of me that says, you know, what, we really
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: ought to be educated together as Americans. There's some upside
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to that in pluralism and all of this. So where's
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: your head on this? And how would you be advising
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: today's governors and tackling and sort of reanimating and modernizing
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: public education.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you're right about the last point. I was in
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: the meeting one time when I was president of University
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: of Tennessee and the president of Notre Dame asked, what
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: is the rational for a public school? There was this
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: embarrassing silence until Albert Shanker, the head of the American
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Federation Teacher said, a public school is for the purpose
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: of teaching immigrant children the three ares and what it
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: means to be an American. So the idea would be
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that we have public schools to take this country of
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: many different people, of many different backgrounds and turn us
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: into all Americans. And that's sort of the eplurbus unham
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: reason we have public schools, and the biggest argument against
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: vouchers I'm for school choice. I think leading government money,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: especially for low income families follow their kids to better schools,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: is a good idea. But I'm also convinced that communities
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: can have the schools they want, and the recent examples
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: of that. I know that in Tennessee, Bill Frist has
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: had a former majority leaders had an organization called score
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: working for seventeen years, and Tennessee has suddenly been leading
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: leading the South and moved way up in the state
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: in terms of reading and math achievement, even though we
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: have spending. I'm not sure exactly what, but I think
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I think the point is probably funny. Mississippi's doing the
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: same thing.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Mississippis leaving a great story that's going on in Mississippi,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: great great story.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: So I think what it is is these different structures.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I like charter schools, especially because that liberates the teachers
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: and give parents more choices. But these different structures are
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: not as important as the quality of the teachers and
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the attention that the parents pay the kids. And if
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: you have good teachers and interested parents, the children going
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: to learn. If you say a high standards, it's about
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: that simple, and it almost has to be done community
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: by community. So you have a national school board with
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: lots of rules from Washington probably doesn't help very much.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't. I guess what roles should Washington play.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: You were Secretary of Education, there's a plan to sort
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of get rid of the Department of Education. I'm curious
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: your thoughts on that, or would you reanimate the Department
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: of Education.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: No, I've always thought we didn't need Department of Education
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: for higher education colleges and universities. About all it does
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: is distribute money, grants and loans to about twenty million
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: college students every year. That can be done in a
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: ministerial fashion. And as a former college president, I really
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: don't want a national board of trust telling like the
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: one President Trump's proposed, and it's kind of backed away
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: from I think lately, that would tell all six thousand
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: colleges what to do K through twelve. I think the
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: better thing to do would be to let the money
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: follow the low income children to the public school of
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: their choice. Now, some states may want to include private schools,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: like Florida does, Tennessee does. That's fine, But if you
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: don't want to include the private schools for a variety
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: of reasons, let them go to the public schools, and
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: you don't need all these federal programs. That's up to
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: quite a bit of money. It would be every child
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: would have a few thousand dollars that would follow them
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  Speaker 2: to a school if they were a low income student,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: and those schools usually have less money. And I think
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: that would be the better way for the federal government
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: to spend this money. And that doesn't take a department.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: So what you need really is an advocate for high standards,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: high goals, high standards, good schools. You need advocacy, but
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: you don't need management from Washington and Education.
• 18:30
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• 20:16
  Speaker 1: there should still be a debate about testing well testing?
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: You know where are you in testing?
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: I ended up in twenty fifteen when we fixed No
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Child Left Behind of keeping the test requirement that George W.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Bush put in as president.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Will you say you ended up? It sounds like you
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: were you were? You were you waiting?
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Basically, well, I had to pass the bill and
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: and and so there were a lot of people, including
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: President Obama and others, who wanted to keep it, and
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: President Bush wanted to keep it. Margaret Spellings, who was
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the Education secretary, came to see me about it, and
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: there's a good argument for it, because she would say
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: that was the whole purpose of No Child Left Behind.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: We at least could require the schools to let everybody
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: know how the can are doing, and then they can
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: make their own decisions about what to do about it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I found that hard to argue with.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Let me, you know, I we I'm sort of I
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: got my whole list here. I'm gonna need six hours
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: with you. I'm teasing, but I want to stay. I
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: want to sort of stay and go back now in
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: your in your career a little bit. You wrote something
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: in the book that I've actually been also trying to
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: rethink how to use as descriptors. You talked about you
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: hated the label moderate. Yeah, and I totally get it.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I get accused of being a centrist or or whatever
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: you want, an institutionalist or whatever you want to call it.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: That's not too bad, no, But it's not that. I
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: call myself an incrementalist. And I think and and so
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: and what you describe yourself. It's look, you're a conservative,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Tom Cotton is a conservative. One is more moderate and temperament,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and one is is a little less moderate in temperament.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I've always viewed moderate as a thermostat uh descriptor. And
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: but I you know, I know it's gotten sort of conflated.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, what would you prefer. I used to call
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you a conservative who believes in legislating, because there are
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: conservatives that are like, now, let's shut this. You know,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: we don't need a federal government doing all this stuff.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: What would be your preferred moniker or descriptive descriptor?
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Oh am, I preferred as I'm a Republican who understands
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: that that if you that there's no reason to be
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: in politics unless you want to accomplish something. I mean,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: when I want to run for governor a second time,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: my wife Honey said to me, no, wait a minute,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: We're not going to go through this again unless you
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: can tell me why are you running and what do
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: you hope to accomplish. And I used to tell my
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: senate colleagues all the time, it's hard to get here,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: it's hard to stay here. So while you're here, you
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: might as well try to accomplish something good for the country.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: And if you want to accomplish something, if you're a governor,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: I was working with Democratic legislature to get some Democrats
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: to agree with you to pay teachers more for teaching. Well,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: does that make you moderate? No, that makes you a
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: governor who wants to get something done. If you're a
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: senator and you want to pass the Great American Outdoors Act,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: you you've got you've got to get sixty votes, and
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Republics have never had sixty votes in the history of
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the country. So you've got to work with Democrats. So
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: I don't believe in being bipartisan. That's not my goal.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: My goal is to get a result and and and
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: to get a result, you sometimes get labeled as a moderate.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: That's what makes that's what kind of made me angry,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: because I mean, I'm a very Republican Republican as a governor,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: I'm you know, I fought the teacher's union and walked
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: across the state and and and hpervative. He told people,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: I've he told I've he told the picture driver's licenses
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: three times because I thought it was an interference with with.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Our libertarian friends would love you for that.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: That's right. So I think Bill Bennett used to say,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: who was as I think everybody knows he was the
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: education secretary for Reagan. Strong conservative, considered as such. He
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: used to say to me, you know, our views are
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: almost identical. But I'm Bill Bennett. Could make a speech
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: and everybody would say what a great conservative. And you
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: could make a speech and they'd say, what a nice person.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of truth that. A lot of
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: it's style, yeah, and a lot of it is the difference.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: The difference between Republicans is not between moderates and conservatives,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: is between Republicans who think you're finished with your job
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: when you finish your speech, and Republicans who want to
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: accomplish something.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm curious. You've watched, in some ways
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: from this perch, you've watched the changing ways that politicians
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: interact with the public, and the public interacts with this
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: public ticians. I've been joking of late that the natural,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the next natural page turn in our politics is going
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: to be Stephen Colbert versus Tucker Carlson, you know, and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I hesitate to sometimes say it because it's kind of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a chuckle. And yet if I told you that was
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the twenty twenty eight matchup, would you be totally shocked?
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I would be shocked. But in nineteen ninety nine,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: when I dropped down the presidential race, that didn't you know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I did pretty.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Well in nice line is amazing, it's amazing, go ahead
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: and rebeat, I said.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: A similar line. You know I was. I was embarrassed.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't do well. In the nineteen run up to
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: two thousand, George W. Bush left me and everybody else
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: than dust. And people said, what do you learn? And
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I said, well, it's all money, and media said it
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: keeps going like this. By two thousand and four, we're
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: likely to have Donald Trump versus the latest Power Bowl
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: winner with chair as an dependent candidate, and I just
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: picked Trump's name out of the blue. I didn't know him,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: know anything about him, but I missed by about twelve
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: years his rival. We've got a different environment where people
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: are you know, famous for being famous, or their presence
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: on the screen makes a big difference in whether people
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: will vote for him. Their ability to attract attention depends
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: upon their extreme positions and their ability to raise money.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: By the digital democracy we live in, so all that
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: provides not very much incentive for people who are really
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: interested in saying, Okay, what can we do to advance
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: medical miracles or what can we do to you know,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: take care of national park maintenance? And if we're going
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: to do that, can we get enough of us together
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: to get a result? That takes some work And it's
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: a completely different style of ser than just making the
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: speech that will get the most cliqus you on your
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: cell phone.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Look, I think everything is cyclical and that at some
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: point the electorate's going to decide, no, we don't want
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the best theater person. We need somebody, you know, we
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: want the workhorse. And you know, I don't know we're
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: there yet, and I don't know if our current media
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: climate even rewards that just yet. And I think that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: that's an issue. But let me poke, let me dig
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: in here on money in politics. One of the most
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: fascinating things that I've been striking up a pretty close
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: relationship with John Kasik, and he's become a huge sort
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of believer now in campaign financial reformat. He goes, I
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: never would have advocated for it twenty years ago, you know,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: just you didn't have many conservative Republicans that would say that.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: But it does feel like there's we've hit a tipping
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: point where we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This this money
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: is on another level that is consuming our politics. What
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: do we do about it? I'm not sure. Well, first
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: of all, are you I've never are you there? Are you?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: There?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Are you talking about this?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I've never favored limits on I mean, I ran for
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: president in nineteen ninety six at a time when you
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: could only raise one thousand dollars per person, and I
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: raised about fifteen million dollars and did pretty well in nineteen.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: You were you were one of the better fundraisers at
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: that time.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: At that time, but I was no competition for Steve Forbes,
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: who got in late and wrote checks and spent about
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: thirty forty million dollars trashing Bob Dole. So when you
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: put limits on campaign contributions you that may be good,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: but you advantaged somebody else. I agree with you. It's
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: a problem. I heard the other day somebody said the
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: presidency is now billion dollar race. Senate is a fifty
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: million dollar race. Well, my last Senate race in twenty fourteen,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I spent ten million dollars.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: So are you paying attention to the Cooper Michael Watley
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: race in North Carolina? That's going to be a billion
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: dollar race? Lamar?
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Is it really?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: That's going to be It's going to get close total
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: spending combined. There's some talk that could be the first
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: billion with a b billion dollar center race. Obviously it's
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a fairly large state and there's just you know, huge
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: stakes and huge and two proven fundraisers, right, a former
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: governor and an RNC chair.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Well, our mutual friend Doug Bailey used to have a
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: solution to it, which you may remember. It was he
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: thought that the law ought to be that you can
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: only contribute to a race if you lived in the state.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think of that?
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Almost all the rules that I've heard of that, people
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: come up with the limit the flow of money, people
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: find a way to get around it, and it tends
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: up making it harder for someone else to run their
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: unanticipated consequences. So I don't have a solution. I've gotten
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: to the point in life for if I don't have
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: a solution, I'm not afraid to say, Oh I don't
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: have a solution.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: No, I look, I agree because I agree with you.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I used to quote there's this great line in the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: movie Jurassic Park, and it's also in the Michael Crichton book.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: But the Jeff Goldblum character that the old man talks
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: about how oh no, no, where these dinosaurs they're not
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: going to mate. We've we've fixed that, and he says,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: he says this great line, life finds a way. And
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I've always said that in my experience now watching attempts
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: to limit money, every new limit has opened the door
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to a bigger spicket each time, because money finds a way.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty clear now, McCain find goal was
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a massive failure because it took money that was coming
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: into the system where there was a reporting mechanism and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: there was transparency and you knew where who was giving
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: the money to the two parties and parties, that's right,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and then it party weakened the parties, right, It served
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: to weaken the parties number one, which in itself means
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: we don't have the the vetters if you will, right
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: who you know, this is a bad person, this good person,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: et cetera. And then it put money. It basically created
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the dark money system that everybody hates right now.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Well so fairly, it's a fairly recent phenomenon. I remember
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I was at the Harvard Kennedy School and I went
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: to Graham House and took me to see John Carrey,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: and I said to John Carrey, if you spend your
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: own money, you'll be the first serious candidate ever to
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: do it in a presidential primary, which he then did.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: If you remember, he lost eye borrowed money from I
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: guess his wife's house or his and one New Hampshire.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: But if he hadn't been able to inject a lot
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: of money into it, he would he wouldn't have been
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: able to do it.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Let me, I'm going to ask you about Howard Baker
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: because for me it's a bit personal. I think my
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: father was the only person in Miami that had a.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Howard Baker for President bumper sticker on his ninety was
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: seventy nine. Really, I don't know if the campaign really
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: made it day?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Did it didn't get off the ground.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Doug Bailey used to say that had
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you not been governor, that that campaign might have been
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: gone better.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Now why did he think that?
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I think the implication was you to run the campaign.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Oh well, I don't know that I could have done that.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: You know, President Ford asked me to run his campaign
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy five, and I couldn't because I'd lost
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: the governor's race and family circumstances wouldn't allow me to
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: go away. It would have been hard to beat Ron
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: with Reagan in nineteen eighty he you know, that was
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: really the third try he'd run. He made a little
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: try in nineteen sixty eight, then he seventy six was close,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: and then people were ready for him in nineteen eighty.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: So Baker was an appealing candidate, but it would be
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: hard hard to beat Reagan. Plus Reagan was running on
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: we bought it, we paid for it, the Panama Canal,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: and Baker right rightified the treaty. So on some issues
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: he would have.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Been was on the wrong side of where the base was. Yeah,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I think so, Well, what I mean, why else do
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: you think Baker couldn't get traction and why did it?
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Why didn't Baker get traction but Bush did?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: That's a good that's a good question. Baker, and I
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: say this with love and respect, was a little undisciplined.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: You know, he was a legislator, and the custom to uh,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: moving around the center with relationships corrupt the kind of
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: thing that that's not efficient and and I don't think
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: he was ready prepared for the discipline of a presidential campaign.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, the difference between running for the Senate, running
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: for governor, and the presidential campaign is the difference between
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: eighth grade basketball and the NBA finals. You've got to
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: be really good, which he was, and then you've got
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: to really have a top flight organization, which for example,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: George W. Bush did and when he ran. So I
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: don't think he ran a disciplined campaign in nineteen eighty.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Well, what you're painting a picture of is are you
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: still a firm believer that the best job that prepares
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: you for the presidency, maybe besides the vice presidency, is governor.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, I am but because as I look at
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: the governor, as I look at you know, I worked
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: with tim presidents. I knew a couple more I came in.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I was in the Kennedy Justice Department as a student,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: and then with Baker when LBJ was here. But I
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: worked with ten and I think the one who best
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: fit the job was Reagan because of his executive demeanor
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: and his comfort in doing what Lincoln did, which is
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: to gather a team of rivals to help him, and
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: brought in Bush as his vice president, Jim Baker as
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: his campaign as the chief of staff, and then is
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: another rival, Howard Baker is the chief of staff. So
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: he brought in very broad gaged people who who who
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: were knew the nuances of Washington in the White House,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: and he listened to them, unlike Jimmy Carter, who came
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: in not knowing much about Washington and brought a bunch
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: of people who didn't know anything either. And he was
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: in his third fourth year before he really got got
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: his feet on the ground. So I think that Clinton
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Clinton was effective governor and such I mean president, and
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: his moral failures hurt him, but he was the best
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: politician of the president's I knew, and he proved to
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: be an effective governor. George W. Was the most normal
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: of the presidents I worked with.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a great description. I completely Look, I've
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: my president's personally knowing begins with Clinton, and that's my
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: description of W. He's he's a guy, you know.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: You know, you'd have a cigar with him or whatever.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: And he wasn't a Rhodes Scholar president of Harvard Law Review,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: and that didn't bother him and.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: The other Yeah, but he was smarter than most people
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: you talk with.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, he was pretty smart. And the thing that that
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: he was born on third base, but he treated as
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: an He was comfortable with it being an opportunity to
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: steal home rather than an excuse for a therapy session
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: every week. And most of the people who run for president,
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: when you start from scratch and try to go all
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: the way to the top, that just squeezes so much
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: life out of you. There's not a lot of left
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: by the time you get there. Bush had it all,
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: you know. So he was gregarious. He was gregarious, friendly,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: easy to get along with, and the most normal of
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: the batch.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite late moments in politics. And I
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: remember watching and observing it and wishing we saw more
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of this more often than it didn't happen, but for
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: this one event, and that was the infamous or famous
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. It was basically the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: debate you had with Barack Obama over healthcare in the Blairhouse.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And it was one of those moments that I thought,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: this is what the country should see is our political leaders.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe they disagree, and they did and you did, and
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: you guys were having this debate, but it was out
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: in the open, and it felt so healthy for a moment,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: and I thought, is this Obviously it was a little
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: bit of a publicity stunt, right, there was no doubt.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: But it almost worked, didn't it.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: It did almost work. And I'll give the president credit
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: for having the day of discussion. What he basically did, though,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: was Kevin formed the Republicans. We never could have gotten
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: on that much television to offer our point of view.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: And then Senator McConnell and John Bayinner asked me to
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: take the time for both the Republicans and the House
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: members and the Senate members, which is anybody who's been
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: in Washington long knows how in the city of Elbow
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: is how odd that is.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say the fact that they
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: all agreed to let you be the lead, right, that
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: is a little unusual.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Let me speak, And so I did, and that irritated
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Obama because he thought I was going on too long.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: And then we had a difference of opinion about whether
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Obamacare would increase the cost of individual insurance, and I
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: had evidence from the CBO that it would. He thought
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I was wrong. But what I decided to do in
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the end, I remember saying to mister President, rather than
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: rather than pursue this further in public, I'd like to
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: give you my notes after the meeting and show you
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: why I said that. And I did that because I
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: think people have respect for the office of president, and
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: they don't like it very much when even a senator
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: just com berates the president for too long a period
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: of time. So I argued with him for a while,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: but then i'd cut it off and gave him my
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: notes afterwards.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: How did that go?
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I don't think he ever agreed with me. I was
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: right about it.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I mean I remember you saying to me once. Maybe
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: you said it to me or you said it the DOUG,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: but it was like I gladly trade Medicaid back to
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: the federal government if you will, wanted it to take Medicaid,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: And part of it was just how much of a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: budget buster it was for governors.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I did more than say it. I went to see
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: President Reagan in nineteen eighty eighty one. I was governor,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: he was president by them, and I proposed to him
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: a grand swap. I said, you take all of Medicaid,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: which states pay about a third or forty percent of,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: and we'll take all of K through twelve education, and
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: that belongs to the states anyway. And that would put
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: all of medicaid under one management, the federal government. It
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: would be better managed if you'd had one manager. Reagan
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: liked that, and he proposed it in his State of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the Union address, but it never went anywhere.
• 40:35
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• 42:06
  Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. Ironically, I would argue,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: we've basically that's what we have is universal medicaid. In essence,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: it's just cobbled together by the states and kind of
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: funded by the Feds.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, I would check the latest numbers, but the
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: federal government probably be pays sixty percent of medicaid and
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: the states paid let's say forty But from the state budgets.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: What happened in the eighties and the nineties was it
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: went from being three or four percent of the state
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: budget to twenty or thirty percent. And where'd that come from.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: It came from education. It came particularly from colleges and universities,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: and also from K through twelve. So medicaid was cramping
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: our ability to improve schools.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you. On the state level, I was
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: moderated a conversation call it a debate conversation between Chris
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Christy and David French about at the time it was
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: really about sports gambling, and one of the issues I
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: brought up is how all these vices are actually important
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: funders for many state governments. Right, if you have an
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: allergy to raising taxes, well, the best solution is a
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: vice tax, right, gambling tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, marijuana tax.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: But there's a cost to legalizing all these vices. And
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: then you get where state governments are dependent on essentially
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: bad behavior in order to fund state services. Are you
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: worried where you know? Look, you didn't you didn't have
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: to make I think you brought the lottery in, did
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: you no?
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Actually, actually it was the reverse.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I kept the lottery out, kept it out. Okay, you know, I.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Was opposed to what I believe is state sponsored something
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: for nothing. I thought it was bad, bad policy. So
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: when it came time to raise money to try and
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: build the best highways to get all the saturn plant suppliers, right,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: double the gas tax and paid for it so we
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: didn't have any death I and I literally kept kept
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: gambling out of Tennessee while I was governor. But the
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: lottery came in right after I left, and it's grown
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: to be very important and the money goes for education
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: and people like it.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: But I think, but I guess the question is you
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: see where I'm going right, and it's like, are we
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: going down a slippery slope here and funding state government?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: We're being so reliant on vices, so reliant on stuff
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: that we are worried or you know, like the casinification
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: of everything, young men getting quickly addicted to these sports
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: gambling apps and yet were yet state services can't be
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: funded without it.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a valid, a valid concern, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: I've found my experience was that when it came time
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: to do what I just mentioned to do we want
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: the Saturn suppliers we haven't had the auto industry. Saturn
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: is going to bring in hundreds of suppliers. Do we
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: want them in Tennessee? And they won't come unless we
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: have super four lane highways so they can get their
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: parts to the plan that I could persuade Tennesseeans to
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: raise the gas tax, reled and borrow money or rely
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: on to syn attax or use lottery money. And in
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: that case, every single Republican voted for it. And now you.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Think you could have made that case in today's Republican party.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I mean you think about what happened to Don Sunquist
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: in your own state when he tried that.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: That was an income tax, and he tried, but that
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: would be harder today. But but I think states ought,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: if any better roads. There's no need to have them
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: built from Washington and and I don't And the cost
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: of to an individual of of you know, an extra
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: gallon of gas a year, so you don't sit in
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: the traffic jam. That's not a hard case to make.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: All right. I got two more areas I want to
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: explore with you. One is our friend Doug Bailey, and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: two is where's this Republican Party going. So let's start
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: with Let's start with the Republican Party, and then we'll
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: end on on some high notes about Doug.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: That's good. Doug Bailey is a high note in my book.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: The same with me. I miss him. I miss him
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: every day, especially in this in these moments. And I'm
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: sure I'm sure you've had I have a folder of
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: stuff that he was sending you having to do with
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: a certain hotel that was being built in DC. But yeah,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: we will set that aside. But let's talk about where
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: this Republican Party is going. I was, like I said,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I was recently with Chris Christy and he thinks that
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: we're going to see a natural transition, and that you know,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: like any president, if they get clobbert in the midterms
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: in their second term, you're going to start to see
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: the traditional shift away from that president by that party
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: in power, in this case the Republicans. I'm a little
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: What about you depends on who votes in primaries. I
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: think to Donald Trump's credit, he brought a lot of
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: people into the Republican primary who never thought about voting before,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: and they're still there basically doing what he thinks ought
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: to be done. So I think that to change that,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: you'll have to get other people or more people voting
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: in the primaries. We've gotten in a situation, and that
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: this is an answer to your question, but we've gotten
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: in a situation where as she as maybe five or
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: six percent of the registered voters can pick a primary winner,
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: and as a result, both the Democrats run. The Democrats
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: run to the left, the Republicans run to the right,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: and that's who you get. So anybody who's center left
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: or center right, which a majority of people are, they're
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: left out. They don't have to vote, they don't have
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: anybody to vote for the general election. So I think
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: for the Republican party to shift gears. There will have
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: to be a lot of people go vote in the
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Republican primary who have not been voting in it lately,
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: and then you'll get a different kind of nominee. Now,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: how do you do that? I suppose what you do
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: is you use social media to do it. Social media
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: is what created what we've got now, and I don't
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: want any way to undo it except to use social media.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I don't mean be foul language and all that. I mean,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: just use the skills of social media to attract more
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: people into the primary. For a. I mean maybe a
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: lot of Trump voters too. I mean there may you know,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: people sometimes say, well I like chocolate, but I've had
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of chocolate. Maybe I'll try vanilla. There may
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: be Trump voters like that, and then there'll be people
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: who don't like Trump of the Republican Party who are
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: ready for something different. Pretty for a.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: No, you remember seeing the rise of this wing of
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the party in that O two race. I remember you
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: you had a serious primary challenger. I was running to
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: your right. If I'm not mistaken in the center.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: That's right. I mean Ed brant Ran. He was a
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: conservative Republican from West Tennessee and and had been a
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: prosecutor in the Clinton impeachment trial. A very able, very
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: able guy. Yeah. We I mean Tennessee is basically a populist, independent,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: conservative state, and it shifted around. I mean the Confederates
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: have become Republicans, and.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: They used to your neighborhood. I mean I used to
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: love that stat. Eastern Tennessee has the longest continuous Republican
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: representation in Congress. Right, it was the only the district
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I was from.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: It was never elected a Democrat to Congress.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: I mean they were Republican, they were Union it was artists.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: They when when Tennessee seceded from the Union, uh, they
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: voted against it and they went north to Kentucky joined
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: the Union army.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: And I always thought, you Corker. I mean it felt
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: like all of all of the Tennessee Republicans in my
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: early adulthood all were East Tennessee Republicans.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Baker brought too. That's where I mean my great
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: grandfather was asked about his politics. He said, I'm a Republican.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: I fought to save the Union and I would vote
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: like I shot. So those are the Lincolnites, and they
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: became Republicans.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I only asked about that race because do you now,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: in hindsight see the see the elements of the Trump
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: movement from that campaign.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: There, Yes, is the answer to that. I mean, there's
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: always if you go back to there was a John
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Birch Society and in the sixties, and then there was
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: h let's see, it was Reagan's movement. There was moral majority,
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: there was parole, there was I'm overlooking a couple, but
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: there's always been a strain of conservative populism Republican Party
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: then maybe a third of the hole, maybe a third
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: of the vote, even in Tennessee. When Trump came along,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: the country had gotten so unsettled. I don't think Trump
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: caused it. I think he's a cynic result of you know,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: it's the ten years before Trump that were the that
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: changed the country. Not Trump. It's what happened with the
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: arrival of social media, the.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Social media, the financial collapse, all that, all that post
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: nine eleven, all of that big stew.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the big that big stew and then then came Trump.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: So that's the big change. How does that? How does
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: that change what happened with the Democrats after mcgovernor, which
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: is the only thing I can analogize it to is
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: that Clinton and Gore and Dick Riley and some of
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Southern governors uh moved there. They created Super Tuesday,
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: moved the Democratic Party more time.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: It was gonna I remember, it was in theory going
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: to be what what was going to nominate Chuck Robb.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of people thought was going to be that.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: This was it was Chuck Robb was the the l
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: bj son in law, and the governor of Virginia was
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: seen as the greatest beneficiary of that.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: And then of course so he Graham, Riley, Clinton gore
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: all of them, and then Clinton Gore ran together and
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: it was hard enough to be They were considered at
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: the time to be centrist Democrats and carried a lot
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: enough of the South to win the national election. So
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: I think Republicans will need to nominate people who have
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: a different temperament, a different I think people would welcome
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: a change in language to mean.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about character in politics all.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: That, and I think there are plenty of people out
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: there who can provide that.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Why do you think character hasn't been a decisive issue
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: for a majority of voters right now?
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Often it isn't. I know in the
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Clinton years it wasn't. I mean Clinton was. He did
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: some pretty bad things.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: But I contend you wouldn't have had Trump without Clinton.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Well maybe maybe so, And people put that second or third.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: I don't. I mean, based upon working with ten presidents,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: I put character in temperament first ahead of whether they
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: lean left or right, because I've seen the pressure and
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: the responsibilities that they have. And it may be that
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: that after Trump more people will value that more. They
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: may say, you know, just as my father took me
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: to the courthouse to meet Howard Baker's senior, the congressman,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: I thought he was probably the most respected man I
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: was ever likely to meet, other than my father and
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: the preacher. I think people would like a prison they
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: get introduced to their grandson and say, I'd like you
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: to grow up and be like him.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Right, we don't have a role model in that way
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that I would feel comfortable with for my son or
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: future grand kid. But they're out there, and that's.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: Just the next for the next.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess here's my concern, Lamar, is that good
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: people look at this terrain. It's not kind you You
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: and I've had these conversations about how rough politics has
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: become for families now, not just the candidate themselves. Are
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: you concerned this is going to drive good people from running?
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: It will some? I mean my experience. I mean I
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: spent five years writing my memoir and it helped me
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: put things in perspective. And one of the lessons I
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: learned was that that the hardest thing in politics is
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: leaving it with your reputation and your family intact. So
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: most people don't want to put up with all the
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: indignities that go with it. But if you want to
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: do is Bill Frist did and save twenty three million
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: lives of people who had HIV ags, Or if you
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: want to pass the Great American Outdoors Act, or if
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: you want to produce a care for cancer, you about
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: have to be elected to do it, or go to
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: work for someone else who has been. So if you
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: have a strong sense of purpose and a sense of humor,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I think you could suffer all the indignities, and I
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: think we'll have plenty of good people that will want
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: to try.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Who do you like out there?
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: I don't have a favorite. I like governors. I like
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: the governor of Georgia, former governor of Virginia. Those are
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: two talented people who have good credentials in the Republican
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Party and who want to be able to mount a
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: credible race.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Is Donald Trump been good or bad for the Republican
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Party or is this a or do we not know yet?
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Well, he's been both. I mean when he came up,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, the Republican Party had gotten ossified, you know,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: in the eighties and the nineties, who developed a whole
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: structure of people in Washington, d c. Who constructed all
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: these litmus tests that you had that you had to
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: check off before you could even be considered a Republican candidate.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: And he busted all that. I busted a lot of
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: that up. He completely blew a lot of that up.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: So that needed to be done, and that was kind
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: of inviting a demolition, and he provided a demolition. What's
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: been bad about it is he's moved away from some
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: very critical things for our country that the Republican Party
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: has always supported, for example, a worldview that that values
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: allies such as NATO. He's also made some big errors
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: in terms of his pardon of people who charged the
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: capital on January sixth.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: And he calls it bs Lamari did it again this
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: weekend and going after Bill Cassidy.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyone who looks careful. I went back there
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: three days after the mob hit the Capitol, and I
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: was my stomach turned about what I saw. George Washington
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: said that the most important thing about our new country
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: was not the first election, but the second, the peaceful
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: transfer of power. And did not accept the peaceful transfer
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: of power then to urge a mob to overturn the result.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: That's bad for the country. And there are other things. See,
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: he's done a lot of good things. I mean, I
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: was glad to see the southern border control. I think
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: he's doing and Iran what some American president was going
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: to have to do sooner or later, which is to
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: use force to keep them from having a nuclear weapon. Now,
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: whether he's doing it as expertly as George H. W.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Bush and his team might have, that's another question. But
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: at least he's trying to do it. I like his
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: nuclear power policies. I can make a list of things
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: that I like the President Trump has dumb, but there
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: are other things that I think have damaged the country.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: What's the line look like? I believe politics is a transaction.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: I believe civilization invented politics that we can settle disputes
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: without violence. So I'm somebody who thinks politics is a
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: good thing. And I know it's a dirty word to
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: some people, but I think it's a good thing. And
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: transactionalism within reason is a good thing. But what's when
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: does transactionalism become harmful?
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: It depends what you mean by trans I mean transaction if.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Well, right now, look I'm gonna I'm not I'm gonna
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: put words in your mouth, but this town feels like
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: it's for sale at times right now, and that everybody
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: kind of knows how you do it. And if you
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: need a regulation to go a certain way, there's a
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: pretty easy path to do it. That shouldn't be the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: way Washington operates.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: No, that's true. That shouldn't be and people should be
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: revolted by by anything. Then that is like that, there's
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: there are as you said, there's always a certain if
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: you mean that kind of transaction, there can't be contributions.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Sure will view that as as well.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: It is donors give money not out of the goodness
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: of their heart, or at least donors that give a
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: certain amount of money, they at least at a minimum,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: expect to have get your phone number.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: Well, they they do, but but I never felt. I know,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: the second time I ran for governor, I got Jim Haslam,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: who didn't need anything, to be my finance chairman, so
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: that everybody who gave money would have to go through him,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: because I was trying to insulate myself from people who
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: thought that just because they gave me a contribution, I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: would do what they wanted me to do. Yeah, that's
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: not the way everybody operates. And I don't know the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: law you could pass that makes everybody operate that way,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: but people can sense it when things go too far.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Doug Bailey before I let you go.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: You know you Doug was your political one of your
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: political consultants for a long time. I remember when I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: first got to the hotline, everybody whispered to me, you know,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Doug's got a part time job. It's to get Lamar
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Alexander elected president and so and all that. So tell
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: me about your when did you and Doug connect first?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I ran for governor in nineteen seventy four and F.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Clifton White was my consultant. Barry Goldwaters guy, and he
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: was delightful. But when I ran again in seventy eight,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: I looked around and I saw that Doug Bailey and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: John Diodorf had represented I don't know the exact number,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: maybe seven out of the twelve Republican governors.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: And governors, yeah, were left in the.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: Nation after the Watergate debacle in nineteen seventy four. So
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: White Stewart took me to see him. And the great
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: thing about Doug Bailey was he was a professor as
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: well as as a political guy.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: So that's something you probably connected with immediately.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And he wanted he didn't He wanted me to win.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: So he created a spectacular campaign, a textbook campaign with
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: a big plan. And I walked across the state. I
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: spent the night with seventy three families, most of them
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't know it.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: So I cooked up with you and Doug the walking
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: across the sta.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: My wife, really, my wife, Honey really was the one
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: who Doug was there. But she said that I wasn't
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: going to run again unless I could tell her why
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: I wanted to accomplish something. And she said, second, could
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: we have a different campaign mode? So we sat around
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: and talked about what I like to do. I like
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: to walk, I like music. So we ended up walking
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: across the state in my red and black shirt with
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: a band of four kids from the University of Tennessee
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: band and a flatbed truck playing Mama Milano music here
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: and it made me a better candidate and a better governor.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: But what Doug Bailey was really good at was he
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: came to see me every week I was governor and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: from Washington and the Democrats and the legislature thought he
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: was coming to give me political advice. He was. He
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: was coming to give me advice about how to be
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: a good governor. And then we talked about the politics
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: of how do we persuade people?
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: Were right, give me a few of his tips. What
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't you take from him on being a governor?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: How do we go about this? Who not who can
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: we get to do this job? But who would be
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: the best person for the job, Then let's go ask them.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: So he was my advisor about how to be a
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: good governor for eight years and a remarkable, remarkable person.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Well, we we did all sorts of fun little things together.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I don't think people realize, but I think we had
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun doing. We were doing internet television
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: before anybody knew it was a thing back in nineteen
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: ninety nine and two thousand with the Yeah right with
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Doug and it was a Tennessee businessman. I think that
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: we did some stuff with it. It was sort of
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: an early lesson and how that.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: World worked or it didn't work.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Well, it didn't know it didn't work then, but you
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: know what that stuff doesn't You know, it doesn't work then,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: but it works now.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Dog Doug wanted an Internet democracy. See if he could
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: see it now, he would not because we have it,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: we have a digit So is that I know?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Do you think he was Yeah, he may have been.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: His vision his vision was both correct and not good.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: He may have not anticipated that the founders didn't want
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: too much democracy and they wanted a republic was structure
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: and elected people who could make judgments about what's right
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: and what's wrong. And the influx of social media, et
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: cetera has has given us more democracy than the founders envisioned. Well.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: At the end, he was working on trying to figure
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: out how to essentially blow up both parties, and I
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: wonder if he was onto something.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: Then well maybe maybe we'll have more independent candidates in
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: the future.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Lamar, it's this was a serious memoir. This is
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: not every senator where their memoirs. Did you model this
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: off of other memoirs? Who do you think did a
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: good job? That you hope this gets compared to? Because
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: I found this both enjoyable and thorough well.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Thanks Seuk. I didn't really model it off anybody. I
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: had a purpose. My purpose was to try to try
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: to let people know that as governor or senator, I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: woke up every day thinking I might do something good
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: for my state or country, and went to bed most
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: nights thinking that I had and that it was still
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: possible in this digital democracy we have today to do
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: that and feel that way and to encourage people to
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: go about it. Second, I've been at it so long,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm working with ten presidents and nearly sixty years.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: I've seen public life from about every angle, and I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: thought the stories would be fun to tell. They'd be
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: time fun for me to tell, and I thought maybe
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: for readers to read.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Well, let me leave folks with this, what is your
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: There are some people who listen to my podcasts and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: some others who are worried about the state of our democracy.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Are you worried about it or do you think it's
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: going to or do you do you sort of follow
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Churchill's belief of Americans that you know, we eventually figure
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: out and do the right thing after we've exhausted every
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: other path.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: I use the word republic, and I borrow went from
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: Senator Howard Baker. He used to say whenever a Senator
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: was causing trouble, or we had a war or some
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: big problem, he would say, the republic will survive. I
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: think the republic will survive too. But I think, and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: people have asked that question for two hundred and fifty
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: years whether it'll survive. But I think we've got some
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: work to do to make it survive. And the only
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: way it will is of you know, talented people figuring
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: out how to be elected. Get more people voting in
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: primaries so they can get elected.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Then going and are you for all party primaries? Are
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you ready to sign up for that? I am all
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: I want to get rid of. I think taxpayer funded
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: partisan primaries. I think are unconstitutional. The idea that I've
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: got to join a private club in order to participate
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: in a taxpayer fund a primary seems it seems like
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: a poll tax to me.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm for open primaries. The Tennessee is moving toward
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: closed primaries. But I never would have been elected if
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: we hadn't had open primaries because I had to attract
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: a lot of Democrats and independence in the Republican primary
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: forty years ago to win the nomination.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny. When parties get power, they want to
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: shut the doors, and when parties are seeking power, they
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: want to open the doors. That's how that works.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: Or when they win by too much, they overreach. I
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: think the biggest challenge we've got the lack of two
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: party competition. When we have it, it's like the Southeastern
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: Conference where all the good players want to play because
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: they like to play with good players, and then you
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: have good games. What's happened in Tennessee is the Democrats
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: can't elect anybody. It's like the University of Tennessee winning
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: seventy to five every week.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: Are you surprised that Nashville hasn't become I don't want
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: to say northern Virginia or the Atlanta suburbs, but that
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Nashville hasn't become a moderating force for the Democratic Party.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: Nashville is actually the most liberal part of the state now,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: the most consistently democratic part of the state, and it's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: the healthiest and most vigorous part of the state in
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: terms of growth. Our whole state's doing pretty well actually,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: in terms of the growth. Our cities are democratic, are
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: the rest of the states Republican, and Democrats can't elect
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: anybody statewide, so that's not good for I didn't like
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: it when we had one party state for one hundred
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: years with the Republicans left out. I don't think it'll
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: be good for Tennessee if we have one party state
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: for one hundred years with all the Democrats left out.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: LA Alexander a great public servant. It's been a pleasure
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: to know you over the years. I appreciate your friendship.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: Thank you, jud Thank you for your time. Hey