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• Sen. Alexander's official site
• Longer bio on Sen. Alexander
• Sen. Alexander's statement on South Africa Freedom Day

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Tavis: Lamar Alexander has an impressive list of public service credits on his resume: governor of Tennessee, secretary of Education under the first President Bush, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and now U.S. senator from the great state of Tennessee. He joins us tonight from Washington. Senator, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Sen. Lamar Alexander: Thanks, Tavis. Thank you for inviting me.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you. Let me start by confessing to you that it's been a string of Mondays, in fact, so many now that I've lost count, but I confess to you I'm almost tired of having--I am, in fact, tired of having these conversations. I'm glad to have you here to converse with, but tired of having these conversations every Monday about more American soldiers dying over the weekend. 137 American troops dead in April. Today, my calendar reads May 3. There are already 11 American soldiers dead in just the first 3 days of May. You supported this war. Did we make a mistake here?

Sen. Alexander: No, we didn't make a mistake in doing it, Tavis, but I feel the way you do on Mondays and usually on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Last Monday, I flew up from Nashville to Washington, D.C., with a young woman and 3 children under 8. I went over to meet them and say hello to them. They were flying up to the funeral of their father, the children's father, at Arlington Cemetery last Thursday. And I wish I could say to you that that's all gonna end, but I don't think it is.

When President Bush decided that we needed to remove Saddam Hussein, almost all the members of Congress, almost all the intelligence leaders agreed that was the right thing to do. The war went great, and winning the peace has been tough. And I think our military presence is gonna be there for a while. We're gonna have more casualties. I wish I could say that we're gonna come home immediately, but we're not and I don't know of virtually no one in the United States Senate or in the government thinks that we should.

Tavis: I'm not surprised by that response, and I say that respectfully, because everybody who I've talked to for this string of Mondays--it seems to never end--has suggested that whether they were for or against the war initially, now that we are there we have to complete the task. Which reminds me of a great philosopher named Daisy Mae Robinson, my late grandmother, who always said to me, senator, 'Tavis, once a task you have first begun, never finish until it is done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.' One could argue that we've not done this thing well and one could also argue that perhaps we shouldn't have done it at all, senator.

Sen. Alexander: Well, not many would say we shouldn't have done it at all. You know, if you really look back on what was said--and I don't think most people really want to look back. I mean, President Clinton in 1998, Senator Kerry in 2002, President Bush--all of them looked at it and said, 'If this man Saddam Hussein keeps going the way he is, he is a threat to the world and to the United States.' So we did it.

The worst thing we could do is turn around and run. If you talk to parents--and I have--of soldiers who were lost in Somalia, the one thing they say to us is do not undertake a military mission unless we have the stomach to see it all the way through to the end. Now we're ready to see if we have the stomach, so I'd rather see us talk about, 'OK, how do we go from here? Does President Bush or does Senator Kerry--which one of them has the leadership, the capacity to take us from here to where we want to go for the kind of Iraq that we want to leave--and then to get ourselves out of there and home and stop the killing?' We just have to be honest and say it's gonna take a while.

Tavis: Let's talk about where we go from here. We can get to November, but before we get to November, we've gotta get past June 30th, and the president seems very firm that June 30th things in Iraq are gonna be handed over to that Iraq governing council. A mistake to hold on to that date firmly?

Sen. Alexander: No, I think it's the right decision. I mean, we have to understand what happens and what doesn't happen then. I mean, what does happen is a new Iraqi government, picked under the supervision of the U.N. Paul Bremer, our ambassador, comes home. A new ambassador, Negroponte, goes there. We have a new embassy in Baghdad maybe, they've said, with 3,000 people in this Iraqi government. What doesn't change is our military's still there to back up the Iraqi government, and what doesn't change is that we still need to be there for the foreseeable future.

Tavis: And let me ask one last question on Iraq. I want to cover a couple other issues with you, if I might. Who do you think--obviously you're Republican--but who do you think the American people are going to think is the best person to move us forward on this issue of terrorism around the world?

Sen. Alexander: Well, obviously I believe President Bush is. I support him. I'm a Republican. But I believe that's the issue in the election. I mean, jobs are getting better. People have different divisions about the so-called cultural issues. The question is, who can take us from where we are to where we're going. For example, I'd like to see us have a special forces to help win the peace like we created a special forces to help win the war. 2 years ago, we weren't gonna be doing this nation-building, and now we are. We've got 15- or 20,000 civilians there. We've got reservists and guardsmen comprising a third or more of the people who are fighting there. I think if we're gonna keep doing this kind of thing in the world that we need to be training a division, maybe 2 divisions, who are specifically trained for winning the peace.

Tavis: You are on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, and I could talk to you for the rest of our conversation just about international matters, certainly these issues involving Iraq. But let me shift gears right quick here because you have such an impressive resume, as I mentioned earlier.

You were the secretary of Education under the first President Bush. It's not lost on me in just days from now, May 17th to be exact, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education in this country. I think everybody agrees that there is an unfinished agenda of Brown v. Board 50 years later. We can debate what that agenda is, but from your perspective, as one who used to run the Education Department, 50 years after Brown v. Board, what is the unfinished agenda?

Sen. Alexander: The unfinished agenda is the door is open for African American and other minority students in America, but they haven't made it all the way through the door and outside into the great opportunity of America. You look at the fourth grade tests in reading for African American students in America today, and 6 out of 10 didn't even score at a basic level. And that is a permanent obstacle because that means that on down the road, when the time comes to go to college, you might get into a college, but your chances of graduating are less. And if you don't go to college, your chances of making money are less. So we have an unfinished agenda of helping all children, African American children especially, find their way, not just through the door, but on the way out to graduation and on the way to college.

Tavis: You mentioned testing, and I know this an impossible question, but let me--let's throw it out there anyway. You mentioned testing a moment ago. When we talk about this unfinished agenda, what since you've been running the Education department again, what centrally, what at the nucleus, what is the essence of what's wrong with public education right now as we know it in America?

Sen. Alexander: Well, public education doesn't give families and children enough choices of good schools. In higher education since World War II, we've had Pell grants and loans, and so you get a--60% of our students get a federal scholarship or a loan that follows them to the institution of their choice. No one says you have to go to the University of Michigan or you have to go to Howard or you have to go Yeshiva or you can't go to Fisk or you have to go to the University of Tennessee. It goes to the accredited institution of your choice. That's created great opportunity. What I would like to do is have not just a Pell grant for college students. I'd like to have a Pell grant for kids that would put $500, let's say, into the hands of a parent--of a middle school parent. And then let all the middle school parents get together at that school and say to the principal, 'Look, altogether we've got about 300,000 new dollars. Hire an extra English teacher, hire an extra math teacher. And if you won't do that, we'll take our money and go to some other accredited program that will.' The school would continue to go, but this will be new money into the hands of middle and low income parents so they can make the Brown vs. Board of Education mandate a reality. Not just get through the door, but get on out into the world of opportunity.

Tavis: We've only got about 30 seconds left here, senator, unfortunately. Speaking of education, President Bush's Leave No Child Behind Act, the jury is still out, is it not?

Sen. Alexander: The jury's still out, but scores in low performing schools across America are up, and what it does confront is the truth that we were leaving many children--many of them minority children-- behind, assuming they couldn't learn, and while it's a lot of intrusion from the federal government, at least it's forced us to take a look at that and to understand it and to deal with that. That's a pretty good way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. Realize we have to move on to the next step.

Tavis: It is a celebration, but I suspect there will be great debate about what that unfinished agenda is. I'm at least grateful to have the chance to talk to you about it for a few minutes. Senator Alexander, thank you so much for your time, sir.

Sen. Alexander: Tavis, thank you for your questions.

Tavis: Glad to have you on. Up next on this program, Oscar-nominated actor Gary Sinise. You know him as Lieutenant Dan from 'Forrest Gump.' Check out what he's working on now. We'll do that in just a second.