Lamar Alexander played a crucial role in short-circuiting the first impeachment trial of President Trump when, as an influential Republican senator from Tennessee, he opposed calling witnesses and said the president’s attempts to pressure Ukraine didn’t meet the test for removal from office.
His role in the second impeachment might have been quite different had he remained in office just a few more weeks.
In his new memoir, “The Education of a Senator,” Mr. Alexander, 85, who is also a former governor, cabinet secretary and presidential candidate, writes with disgust about how the president exhorted the crowd that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and penetrated the Senate chamber in an effort to block certification of the election.
He asserts that the president undermined the Constitution and assaulted the hallowed concept of the peaceful transfer of power.
“If those actions do not constitute a ‘high crime or misdemeanor,’ I do not know what does,” Mr. Alexander wrote in the book, which is subtitled “From J.F.K. to Trump.”
But Mr. Alexander had just left office and did not have the chance to weigh in against Mr. Trump, with whom he had an off-again, on-again relationship.
Ever the careful statesman, the ex-senator said in an interview that it would be “self-righteous and disingenuous” for him to declare how he would have voted on the second impeachment when he was not on the jury.
But he does render a verdict on the conduct of his former colleagues as Mr. Trump has steamrolled over a compliant Senate in his second term. He finds them guilty of failing to assert themselves as the Constitution intended.
“To me, the most disappointing difference between the first and second Trump terms was not what Trump did, but what the Senate majority did not do,” Mr. Alexander wrote. “Republican senators rarely checked abuse of presidential authority.”
From Mr. Alexander, those amount to fighting words from an understated, die-hard institutionalist and loyal Republican who spent years running key committees and experienced Washington from both the legislative and executive branch perspectives.
The former senator thinks the current occupants of the Senate could do with a constitutional refresh, and says he knows how he would approach it.
“I think I’d organize a bipartisan breakfast meeting every week of senators, and we would read Article One to each other,” Mr. Alexander said. “Article One says Congress shall be in charge of spending, in charge of taxes, in charge of tariffs, in charge of declaration of war. The least a Senate can do is preserve its constitutional prerogatives.”
Mr. Alexander arrived in the Senate in 2003 with an extraordinary amount of political experience for a freshman. Beginning his Washington career in 1967, he served on the staff of Senator Howard Baker, a revered leader both on Capitol Hill and in Tennessee, and then as an aide in the White House.
For a time, he roomed with another ambitious young Republican from the South, Trent Lott of Mississippi, whom he would later join in the Senate. Mr. Lott would also defeat him in a Senate leadership election in 2006 when some colleagues who had committed to Mr. Alexander evidently voted otherwise when they cast secret ballots.
“I will be writing 27 thank-you notes for 24 votes,” Mr. Alexander recounts telling his colleagues after the votes were tallied and he came up short.
Between those early stints in Washington and the Senate, Mr. Alexander had notable success as a two-term Tennessee governor credited with boosting the state’s economy by attracting Japanese automakers. He also served as education secretary in the administration of President George H.W. Bush and mounted two presidential bids in which he drew as much notice for his checkered flannel shirts and the exclamation point after his name in his campaign logo as he did votes. He cut them both short — the campaigns, not the shirts.
His political history, personal connections and expertise in compromise gave him a leg up when he came to the Senate. In a period when many in his party were railing against government, Mr. Alexander saw it as a potential force for good.
“I think the Senate job is a three-term job,” he said. “It took me about midway of my second term to get enough clout and understanding to get things done.”
Mr. Alexander found himself working closely with President Barack Obama, whom he describes as “superior to most presidents in terms of policy but not in human relations,” on major education and health bills.
Mr. Obama also saw Mr. Alexander as someone who could help him on another issue — the stalled Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland — because of his close relationship with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who was blocking him. He encouraged Mr. Alexander to intervene.
“It is important that an independent voice like yours be heard,” Mr. Alexander remembers Mr. Obama urging him in a phone call shortly before the 2016 election. “A lot is at stake here.”
A few days later, Mr. Trump was elected, Merrick Garland’s nomination was officially dead and the conservative stamp was soon to be put on the high court.
The lame-duck session following that election did produce a surprise victory for Mr. Alexander, the chairman of the health committee, with the approval of the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan, multibillion-dollar infusion of federal money for health research.
It was signed into law on Dec. 13 by Mr. Obama, who, according to the book, told him that “if it had been just you and me these eight years, everything would have been fine.”
Four years later, that legislation helped provide the means and the money to develop the Covid vaccines under Mr. Trump’s administration, an achievement that many Republicans have come to disdain.
“It puzzles me that he would not take satisfaction and credit for such a great accomplishment,” Mr. Alexander said in the interview.
Mr. Alexander clashed with Mr. Trump on tariffs, trade and spending issues and said that he had seen some recent signs from a few Republican senators of a willingness to challenge the president on those subjects and war powers. But he called for more pushback.
“To put it charitably, senators aren’t realizing the great opportunity they have,” Mr. Alexander said in the interview. “Hold him accountable. Help him come up with a better idea than the one he had. You want the president to succeed, but your oath is not to Trump. Your oath is to the Constitution. You swore that on your first day as a senator. You should follow it.”
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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