If the race for U.S. Senate had been a prizefight, humane observers would have been crying long ago for Democrat Bob Clement’s cornermen to throw in the towel or for the referees to stop the carnage.

As it is, Clement plodded through to the finish, looking bewildered to the last by the onslaught of his Republican opponent, Lamar Alexander, who battered him to the canvas to win the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Fred Thompson.

Alexander likes to play the part of the genial Rotarian, a smart guy with a common touch, but underneath it all he is one of the hard-eyed masters of entrepreneurial politics, and he conducted his bid for a final resting place in American politics with a chilly ruthlessness unencumbered by sentiment or too much destructive reverence for ideology.

As he claimed his victory, Alexander showcased his friendship with Willie Herenton, the slippery African American Memphis mayor who knows how to read political weather vanes. Trying to take the nasty edge off his victory, Alexander called to mind Sept. 11, noting that what had struck the strongest chord in the campaign had been his stated ambition to make the unifying good that had come from that tragedy permanent.

When it was all over, an emotional Clement told supporters, “I couldn’t have worked any harder, because I wanted y’all to be proud of me.”

Clement did his best, trying to call attention to just how well Alexander has done during his years of public life, but he was never quick enough on his feet or safe enough from his own version of scandal to make any of the mud stick.

In the end, Alexander was accusing Clement of conducting a “negative, mean-spirited smear campaign,” while his Republican allies were accusing Clement (two years active duty, 29 years in the National Guard) of not caring about America’s servicemen. Alexander’s military career is still waiting for him.

The nastiness of the campaign, which hardly seems worth mentioning these days, given that it has become the standard in the nation’s political life, obscures the true nature of the campaign, which was a collision at the political center. Both men had long positioned themselves away from the more ideological bases of their respective parties, looking for a safer, softer middle.

Since being elected to the U.S. House in 1988, Clement has tried to stay on the correct side of both the National Rifle Association and the state’s labor unions while also staying within reach of the party’s mainstream in Congress. His weakest support within the party has always been from the progressive wing, and indeed he might have had a bit of a problem on the left had there been a Democratic primary. But that sort of thing was insider stuff, and Clement was well-positioned as a moderate Democrat to take back the seat once held by Estes Kefauver and Al Gore.

Alexander, meanwhile, had been a popular governor in the early 1980s, but had been wandering in the wilderness since. Once thought of as a likely vice presidential choice in 1988, Alexander never hit it off with the first George Bush. His brief tenure as secretary of education was cut short by Bush’s untimely electoral termination. Two unhappy presidential campaigns followed, in which he discovered the limits of the kind of things that had worked so well in Tennessee.

His comeback, prompted by boredom, encroaching obscurity and the sudden decision of Thompson to leave the Senate, came in a different political environment in which Republicans had to contend with a fractious right wing and the specter of terrorism. He fought off a primary challenge from the right by Ed Bryant, who sought to portray Alexander’s popular moderation as just a form of faintheartedness. He prevailed through Bryant’s own clunkiness and embraced all the cultural propositions of the right with a blandness meant to signify that it was all a pose.

Clement might have gained some political traction from traditional Democratic pocketbook issues like management of the economy, prescription drug coverage, higher minimum wage and environmental enhancement, but Tennessee is no longer generically Democratic.

In a contest in which both candidates were elbowing each other for control of the middle of the spectrum, Alexander was able to play the national card, counting on the popularity of the current George Bush. He asked voters to send him to the Senate to “make it one vote easier for President Bush to lead the country” on issues like domestic security, taxes and judicial confirmations. Clement, he said, would “take Fred Thompson’s seat and move it over between Teddy Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.” The image was pure Republican shibboleth-mongering, but underneath, it contained the very core of what the race was all about.

While the two men may have been battling for Tennessee’s political middle, the race also represented one of the key battlefields in the broader race for some of the critical high ground in national politics—control of the U.S. Senate. For that reason, national party money poured in on both sides. Bush showed up to help the Republicans. If any national Democrats could have helped Clement, they would have been in Tennessee too. None could help, so none came—save for a brief foray into the Chattanooga area by Georgia mossback Zell Miller.

In the end, Clement was not the man to make the case for himself—too tongue-tied and intellectually bumbling. Alexander regularly tied him in knots during their campaign debates, hitting him with charges from left field that only someone who regarded Alexander as a shameless cynic would have seen coming. Clement’s financial offensive was largely blunted when Alexander linked him to the corrupt Butcher banking empire, and in the end Alexander was even forcing him to defend the black vote, which Republicans usually concede.

So now Alexander is going back to Washington to take over a job he once disdained. He says it’s his sense of service that drives him, and the typical American skepticism about politicians should not be such as to rule out the possibility. Many Americans were touched by the events of Sept. 11. As senator, Alexander probably will offer some nifty gimmick reform ideas for education and the outdoors. Mainly, he’ll sing in the Republican choir as one of the foot soldiers of the Bush era.

And like many senators, he’ll look at the president and say, “Why him, and not me?” But at this stage in his life, it will only be a wistful thought—and not a provocation to another attack of raging ambitions.

Clement, meanwhile, faces an uncertain future. He told supporters not to worry about him—that he would continue to move forward. But after a long and varied career, it’s more likely the end of the political road.