TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091691/0916123.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.1 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 61

COVER STORIES

George Bush's Point Man


The Education Secretary is putting his political skills -- and
his ambitions -- on the line to sell Choice to Capitol Hill

By SAM ALLIS/WASHINGTON


    Author Alex Haley and his friend Lamar Alexander booked
passage together in 1988 on a cargo ship from California to
Australia, aiming to write books away from the distractions of
their Tennessee home base. Every evening the pair would emerge
from a day of writing in their cabins to watch the "green
flash," which can sometimes be seen just before the sun
disappears below the horizon. "He'd talk, and I'd listen," Haley
recalls. "Lamar talked night after night about the desperate
need to improve American education. It was in his marrow. He
felt impotent to do the things that needed to be done."

    Alexander is frustrated no longer. He is now the point man
for George Bush's educational goals, including the idea of
school Choice, and he is using his soft-spoken salesmanship to
market them to Congress and the American public. The role is the
most challenging yet for the man named by Bush as Secretary of
Education last December, whose mild and courteous demeanor masks
a high-octane ambition. His goal is to transform the Department
of Education, which Ronald Reagan once pledged to abolish, from
a backwater operation in the shadow of the Air and Space Museum
into one of Washington's leading domestic agencies.

    Alexander, 51, brings a degree of political acumen to his
job that was never seen under predecessors Lauro Cavazos and
William Bennett. He learned from masters, serving first as an
aide to Tennessee Senator Howard Baker and then in the Nixon
White House before emerging in his own right as a two-term
Republican Governor (1979-87). This background gives him a big
advantage when he travels to Capitol Hill, as he often does, to
lobby for his program. He understands compromise. "I can work
with a guy like that," says William Ford, the crusty House
education committee chairman.

    But behind the agreeable exterior is a flinty vision of
American public education and its various ills that is sweeping
in its condemnation. "The problem is the system," he says
flatly. Alexander refers to the Supreme Court as "an obstacle"
blocking the use of tax dollars for religious schools. He is
wound tighter than he looks. His celebrated affability sometimes
cracks when challenged -- when he is asked, for example, why his
younger son William attends a Washington private school rather
than a school in the public system. "I chose it because I like
it," he snaps.

    The boyish-looking, sandy-haired native of the small east
Tennessee town of Maryville forgets nothing. "If he ever met
you, he'll remember you," says Haley. Alexander is an inveterate
notetaker, scribbling reminders about all sorts of ideas and
activities on clipboard pads or handy scraps of paper. On his
sea voyage -- where he was writing Six Months Off, a memoir of
stepping out of his professional life -- Alexander made a list
of things to be accomplished each day and crossed them off each
evening. "If he has a fault, it is that he is not much at having
a whole helluva lot of fun," says Haley.

    The sense of discipline comes from his mother Florence, a
no-nonsense woman who ran a nursery school in her backyard, and
his late father Andrew, who served briefly as an elementary
school principal. Lamar began piano lessons at four and studied
diligently through his freshman year at Vanderbilt. Today he can
deftly play Chopin or pound out rocket-top country piano, as he
did in Bourbon Street watering holes while clerking for Federal
Judge John Minor Wisdom after his 1965 graduation from New York
University law school.

    As Governor, he pushed through a 10-point program to
improve public education in Tennessee (including classroom
computers and merit pay for teachers) and a 1
cents-on-the-dollar sales tax to pay for it. Bush liked what he
saw and sought Alexander's counsel periodically on education
matters. The two get along well, and Alexander's wife Honey is
a friend of Barbara Bush's from Texas. This background leads to
speculation that his brand of progressive Republicanism and his
Southern political base would make him an attractive alternative
to Dan Quayle as a vice-presidential candidate in 1992.

    But not everyone is enamored of Alexander's record as an
education Governor. "He brought education to the forefront as
a topic at everyone's kitchen table," concedes Relzie Payton,
president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state
teachers' union. But Alexander was also a tireless
self-promoter, she argues, whose follow-through was less
impressive than his goals. Alexander's educational efforts in
Tennessee have met with mixed success, and, Payton adds, "Choice
was mentioned, if at all, in passing while he was Governor."

    So far, the new Education Secretary has received high
marks for his energy and the caliber of his appointments.
Directly under him as Deputy Secretary is David Kearns, 61,
former chairman of Xerox Corp. Kearns will be, in Alexander's
words, "my chief operating officer" and will spearhead a drive
to raise $150 million from business for innovative schooling
ideas.

    Another interesting selection is Diane Ravitch, the
incisive conservative thinker and education historian from
Columbia University who has defended pluralism on college
campuses against the assault of censorious "political
correctness." Ravitch is in charge of the Office of Educational
Research and Improvement and also serves as counselor to
Alexander.

    No one has ever accused Lamar Alexander of lacking
confidence, either in his ideas or in himself. "Five years from
now, Choice will not be an issue," he serenely predicts.
Instead, he insists, it will be the foundation for a transformed
system of education that has long been his political and
personal dream. Whether that is confidence or evidence of a
quietly unbending temperament is something only he can prove.