DAVID NYHAN

Alexander makes sense for GOP

By David Nyhan, Globe Staff, March 12, 1999

PORTLAND, Maine -- Ol' Lamar is just plain Alexander now.

His first time around the presidential racecourse, the Tennessee walking horse, a former governor and secretary of education, was all duded out in plaid shirt, playing piano tunes, scolding Congress ("cut their pay and send them home") and trying to dent your consciousness with roadside signs stuck in snowbanks: "Lamar walked here!" He's no longer making a big deal about walking. But he is running.

And I think the same thing I thought four years ago: He's got a real shot at winning the nomination of the Republican Party, and he'd be a tough guy for the Democrats to beat. For four years now, a lot of my pals have been ribbing me about my penchant for predicting big things for Alexander. I haven't changed my opinion much at all. He came closer than most people understand last time -- third in Iowa, and if he had come in second in New Hampshire (he finished third, behind Patrick Buchanan and Bob Dole), Alexander would have been the alternative to the incendiary Buchanan, a party-wrecker on the make who is back for his third fling.

Alexander is still way down in the polls; Texas Governor George W. Bush and Elizabeth "I am Woman" Dole have lapped the rest of the field of seven lesser-knowns. But Alexander has the best on-the-ground organizations in Iowa's caucus format (47 weeks and counting). And he's deep in New Hampshire as well, though if Senator Judd Gregg falls to Bush, that gives Bush a ready-made statewide framework. The Bush and Dole candidacies are both top-heavy. Bush won his first election five years ago; Dole has never won an election anywhere.

These are the favorites? In a royalist party, which only once since World War II has crowned as nominee a candidate who had not run for president before? And that was Dwight Eisenhower.

Iowa's Republicans do their thing. And New Hampshire's love to do theirs -- often the opposite. Alexander's theory is that only three Republicans survive Iowa, and that gets winnowed to two after New Hampshire. That leaves a frantic dash to St. Patrick's Day. It is likely that the races in both parties will be over by late March.

So why do I persist in suggesting that a fellow languishing in the single-digits in most places can cop the nomination? First, only a "big tent" Republican can win, and the GOP governors know that, even if the party's impeachment-tarnished congressional leaders still don't get it. By this criterion, only a Bush, Dole, Alexander, McCain, or Kasich qualifies; the righter-than-right wingers (Forbes, Quayle, Buchanan, Bauer) would take the party over the cliff and hand the Senate as well as the House to the Democrats.

Of the nine, only Buchanan, Alexander, and Forbes have run before. Bush has to be deemed unvetted. We have to see if he has any skeletons. Dole is 62, totally untested; her issues profile is a blank slate. Bush has a phenomenal advantage in that more than half the GOP governors are slobbering over his prospects.

But Alexander has been to Iowa 60 times while Bush has been in Austin. Terry Branstad, who was governor of Iowa for 16 years, is running Alexander's caucus effort. There are 2,500 separate caucus meetings across Iowa next Febuary. They voted for George Bush Sr. over Ronald Reagan the year Reagan won the presidency and for Bob Dole over Bush the year Bush won.

It's not hard to see Alexander finishing in the top two in Iowa and New Hampshire, and anything could happen in the ensuing three weeks. But there is something else: No one has run harder, longer, or more seriously for this office. He has devoted the last six years to the task with a focus that is positively Clintonesque.

Finally, Alexander, to me, if not to a lot of my friends, looks like a president. He talks like a president. He is deadly serious, the way Jimmy Carter was. He is a border state moderate, in GOP terms. He has already lofted a signal flare on abortion: He opposes it, but he'd be willing to pick a running mate who is prochoice. Alexander's big deal is education. His tax and social policies spin around the education axis. His Achilles' heel may prove to be a series of obscure business deals that opponents have criticized as too cozy and conflict-related. But Bush has to defend his business deals (with baseball's Texas Rangers), and Dole her conduct of the Red Cross and Cabinet assignments.

We all know that the media are rabid, rapacious, and risque. Alexander has more armor on these scores than the other two. There is something of the Southern preacher in him, and the morality issue in the wake of Clinton's problems may be the issue that tips Campaign 2000. Being a strait-laced New Age Southerner with a solid record as governor was all Carter needed to convince us he wasn't another Nixon. It may be enough for Alexander to persuade Republican voters he's not another Clinton. I could see that happening. again.