Soon, Sen. Lamar Alexander’s successor will be elected. A couple months after that, Alexander will leave office and retire after more than 50 years in politics. What happens next around here will almost certainly be obnoxious. The anecdotes about the statesman who ran for governor, president and senator, crisscrossing the state in a plaid shirt on a first-name basis with the public — Lamar!
I’ll pass.
Political observers in recent years have often been heard declaring that some figure or another is “on the wrong side of history,” attempting to wield the fear many of us probably feel from time to time — that our children or grandchildren will at some point feel compelled to denounce us. That’s a bit of a fool’s game, of course. There is not one definitive history, and even if there were, how could we predict what it will see when it looks back on our era? We can try to make sure recent history isn’t full of bullshit, though. We don’t have to, for instance, pretend that what you mostly need to know about George W. Bush is that he was a folksy president who turned out to be an OK painter.
Likewise, while we’re writing our first drafts of history as it pertains to Lamar Alexander in the coming months, we needn’t cast him solely as some respectable holdout from a more decent era when Tennessee Republicans were moderate statesman or whatever the hell. Over the past four years, Alexander has been at best an empty suit and at worst a collaborator with one of the most incurious, incompetent and spiteful presidents to ever hold the office. That’s not all there is to know about the senator — the story of how and why he became governor of Tennessee a few days early is pretty good, and he also plays piano — but it’s certainly what I’ll remember.
Maybe none of that should be a surprise, given Alexander’s crucial role in the origins of the private prison industry. He is not a man who has always avoided or denounced morally dubious enterprises or the characters they produce.
Alexander's weakness in the face of Trump began before Trump was even president. In 2016, when The Washington Post published the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape — in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women — Alexander said he was “disgusted” but declined to say he would not vote for Trump. Since then, 26 women have accused Trump of sexual harassment or assault. If the senator has been moved by these women’s stories, he has not seen fit to do much about it publicly.
Similarly, as people across the country were outraged by the Trump administration’s policy of deliberately separating migrant children from their parents at the border, Alexander cleared the lowest of all bars. He called on the administration to end the policy and work on a solution to “prevent a humanitarian crisis.” But in the years since, as the horrifying details of the policy have come to light, Alexander has been nowhere. Many of us are reeling this week after reading that the parents of 545 children who were ripped from their families at the border cannot be found. Will we ever hear from the senator about this?
Alexander is not confused about who Trump is or how the president conducts himself. After Trump was impeached and facing a trial in the Senate earlier this year, Alexander announced that while it was obvious Trump had done the things he was accused of doing, it was the voters — not the Senate — who should decide whether he remained president. Fair enough, perhaps. Except that Alexander has sat idly by while Trump wages war on the legitimacy of our electoral process by undercutting the postal service, spreading lies about voter fraud and refusing to commit to accepting the results of the election if he loses.
Even a global pandemic — the scale of which would be difficult for even the most serious and empathetic president, much less the malignant cartoon character currently holding the office — has not inspired Alexander to stand up to Trump and tell the truth about his disastrous leadership. In June, seemingly seeking to imply the truth without damaging Trump’s ego, Alexander released a statement lamenting the absurd political debate around wearing masks.
Wrote Alexander: “Unfortunately this simple lifesaving practice has become part of a political debate that says: If you're for Trump, you don't wear a mask. If you're against Trump, you do. That is why I have suggested the president should occasionally wear a mask even though there are not many occasions when it is necessary for him to do so. The president has millions of admirers. They would follow his lead.”
Imagine being a high-ranking U.S. senator at this moment and merely "suggesting" these sorts of things.
Alexander was exactly right about the president’s “admirers” though. Trump’s cultish following takes every cue from him, even when that means villainizing and attacking our leading public health officials. A story by 60 Minutes over the weekend included the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible public health official in the country, now goes on walks with federal agents because of the death threats he and his family have received.
On Monday, Alexander released a brief statement praising Fauci.
“Dr. Fauci is one of our country’s most distinguished public servants,” Alexander said. “He has served six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan. If more Americans paid attention to his advice, we’d have fewer cases of COVID-19, and it would be safer to go back to school and back to work and out to eat.”
Why was this statement necessary? Alexander carefully left out that context, but the answer is, of course, Trump. The president turned his ire on Fauci Monday, as he has many times during the pandemic whenever the doctor dares to contradict Trump’s delusional wish-casting about the coronavirus.
Imagine being a high-ranking U.S. senator and still carefully choosing your words in this way, all to presumably avoid angering the reality-TV president and drawing the attention of his Twitter followers. I suppose it's good that Alexander didn't join in the attack and that he is slightly less galling on average than his fellow senator from Tennessee, sentient MAGA hat Marsha Blackburn. But this cowardly and empty posturing doesn't do anyone much good.
In less than two weeks, Alexander’s replacement will be elected, and he will officially become a lame duck. The truth is, though, he’s been walking and talking like one for years now.
