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As governor, education secretary, and senator, Lamar Alexander left his mark on American education
Most books about governing start with a theory of how the world works and how to solve its problems. Marxism. Capitalism. Communitarianism. Post-liberalism. The theory is the book’s throughline and takeaway. Works from the modern American right are no different. Since the 1980s, conservatives have mostly stuck to a familiar ideology, a suite of principles like limited government, free markets, law and order, federalism, and originalism. Whether the book is on the administrative state, schools, housing, or something else, you could count on the author’s focus on these principles.
Lamar Alexander’s compelling new memoir, The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump, is different. It is all but ideology-free. This is the book’s great strength and its occasional weakness. It was also Alexander’s great strength and occasional electoral weakness as a public servant. As a young congressional and White House aide, governor and education secretary, and three-term U.S. Senator, Alexander was pragmatic and results-oriented. He developed a disposition to match; he was understated, accommodating, and diligent. What seemed to drive him were not grand theories but traits regularly found in leaders of the pre-ideology era: Ambition, love of community, practical wisdom, and a sense of public duty.
That suite of characteristics is what ultimately serves as this book’s throughline and takeaway. It helps the reader understand why Alexander was so successful as a state leader and why his reflections on that time seem so smooth and charming. It helps the reader understand why he was so frustrated by his unsuccessful, decade-long pursuit of the presidency, why the Republican electorate chose not to nominate him, and why this part of the book has more than a whiff of bitterness. And it helps the reader appreciate why his final act as the consummate federal legislator was so productive and what the nation has lost with his retirement.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Education Next
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Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. This piece is based off a recent issue brief.