The following article appeared in the Keene Sentinel on Thursday, July 27. The article was submitted to NH-Primary by the reporter, Erin Caddell.
Erin Caddell The Keene Sentinel
It's going to take an outsider to make the promise of the 1994 election come true, and Lamar Alexander believes he is that candidate.
Alexander, the former Tennessee governor, who also served as President George Bush's secretary of education, was in the Monadnock Region Wednesday, drumming up support for his presidential bid.
Alexander believes the Republican congressmen - including the four running against him for president - talk a good game about change and reform. But, he said, key senators like Bob Dole and Phil Gramm are looking more like the Democratic leaders they replaced in November 1994.
Alexander says it's going to take a Washington outsider to finish the job of balancing the federal budget and returning power to the states, both themes of the November Republican landslide.
``I thought we had an election in '94 about the arrogance of Washington, about Democrats who are always telling us what to do,'' Alexander told a crowd in Dublin. ``That's what I heard from everyone. And now we have Republicans who, in their enthusiasm, are saying, `Well, we know what to do and we'll tell you.'|''
Alexander's campaign style matches his message. During his Wednesday visit, he wore his trademark red-and-black flannel shirt and khaki pants, and talked up his 90-mile walk across eastern New Hampshire that he's spacing out over the months leading up to the February primary.
The walk, and the emphasis on one-on-one, grass-roots campaigning, are not new ideas for Alexander. In 1978, he walked 1,000 miles across Tennessee during his successful gubernatorial campaign. And he drove through 38 states last summer to prepare for his presidential run.
To the two dozen voters who braved an afternoon downpour to meet the candidate at Dublin School, and the 50 or so people who chomped on free hamburgers and hot dogs in Wheelock Park in Keene, Alexander delivered folksy anecdotes about those trips, hammered away on his anti-Washington themes, and tried to distance himself from the ``insiders'' in the presidential field.
Alexander, 54, says he has spent enough time in Washington to be ``vaccinated, but not infected'' by the inside-the-beltway trap, unlike his rivals.
Alexander wants the federal government to butt out of many policy decisions. He ripped the federal crime bill - supported by some Republican congressmen - and a welfare reform bill proposed by Gramm. He says that decisions on welfare and crime should rest firmly in the states.
While it's tempting to set standards for the nation to follow, Alexander said, state and local governments are better off when left alone. He supports converting Medicaid, and federal crime and education programs into block grants and letting states decide how to spend it.
Alexander also supported a Constitutional amendment to limit terms in Congress that stalled in the House earlier this year, as well as an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget that narrowly failed in the Senate.
``We go through this charade of acting like a federal crime bill can solve crime in Keene, and it can't. Or that a federal education bill can make parents be more active in their children's lives and help teachers do their jobs, and it can't,'' he said.
Alexander focuses most of his discussion on domestic issues. But, he does hold a strong opinion on the situation in Bosnia- Herzegovina. (See story, page 1)
``I'd stay out, if you want it in two words,'' Alexander said. ``The operating principle would be: We should never become involved in someone else's civil war unless we're prepared to pick one side and win the war.''
When it comes to Bosnia, a national consensus simply does not exist, Alexander said. He estimated that 150,000 to 300,000 American ground troops would be necessary to end the conflict. ``Do we have the stomach to see it all the way through to the end? The answer's no to that. It would take several years,'' he said.
Alexander touts both his southeastern Tennessee, middle-class roots - which he says connects him to real people - and his business acumen.
He's a partner in a prestigious Nashville law firm, has profited from his investments and served on corporate boards. Along with his wife and several other investors, he also founded a company that provides child care for big companies.
The firm employs 1,200 people, a figure Alexander points to as an example of his business experience, a contrast with Dole and Gramm, who Alexander says are career politicians.
To encourage jobs and economic growth, Alexander supports cutting the capital-gains tax rate and simplifying the tax code, though he hasn't supported any of the myriad of tax overhauls discussed by other candidates and legislators.
An outsider from inside
Alexander graduated from Vanderbilt University and New York University Law School, and worked as a law clerk, a U.S. Senate staffer and an aide in Richard Nixon's White House. He entered private law practice in Tennessee in 1970, and won the race for governor there in 1978.
As governor, Alexander focused on improving the state's education system and its economy, recruiting several foreign companies to build plants in the state.
After two terms, Alexander, his wife, Honey, and their four children moved to Australia for six months. When they returned, Alexander was named president of the University of Tennessee. Several people who came to listen to the candidate Wednesday said they are still waiting to see if Alexander can emerge from the pack and win the February primary. But Alexander has already won the support of Lynn and David Hazlewood of Nelson, who came out for the Keene barbecue.
The couple remember Alexander fondly from when they lived in Tennessee during his tenure as governor. David met the candidate during his walk across Tennessee in 1978.
Lynn Hazlewood said the state's education system and job market improved during Alexander's tenure, and that those issues are important to her in the presidential race.
``He's very honest, forthright and understanding,'' she said. ``And he was then, too.''
Alexander was not shy about handicapping the presidential race. During an interview at the Sentinel, the Tennessean said that the race would come down to him and Dole. Different in many ways, he said, but both good choices for the country.