Sen. Alexander nears finish line of decades in public office

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — More than four decades ago, Lamar Alexander won a ticket to the governor's mansion after he walked more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) around Tennessee in a plaid shirt and hiking boots. He spent the night with 73 families and called his campaign headquarters from payphones.

Alexander, who served two terms as the state's chief executive before heading to Washington, is finishing up his third and final U.S. Senate term in a nation increasingly divided by the COVID-19 pandemic, issues of racial injustice and law enforcement, and the vitriolic election season.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, wearing a facemask in the same red-and-black plaid he favored as a young candidate, the 80-year-old Republican lawmaker discussed how he has navigated the presidency of President Donald Trump.

Known as a dealmaker from a more cooperative, bygone era, Alexander has spent his final years, in part, deciding how and whether to react to what Trump is saying, doing and tweeting, without losing a partner in the White House who shares some of his own priorities.

Alexander said many Democrats wish he would “spend more time criticizing President Trump’s behavior,” while a lot of Republicans wish he “spent more time criticizing President (Barack) Obama’s liberal policies.”

“President Lincoln, if he got mad, he’d write a hot letter and put it in the drawer,” Alexander said. “Today, if the president gets mad, he puts it out on a tweet to 72 million people and they put something out on their tweet. So, this drives a lot of division in the country. The blessings of an internet democracy — we’re somehow going to find a way to tolerate it and live with it if we want to unify the country and solve big problems in a way most of us can accept.”

The former U.S. education...