(upbeat music) - [Female Announcer] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - I am Mike Galligan, with the Law Offices of Galligan and Newman in Mcminnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's on PBS station, because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

- [Male Announcer] The Law Offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise, as small firm, personalized care and service.

- That made a difference to me.

I wanted to leave the Senate and leave public life at a time when what people remembered, and what I remembered about was that I was coming as close to hit a home run as I could.

(upbeat music) - Senator Alexander, it's been a few years since we had the chance to talk on one-on-one and a lot has happened in those few years.

But thank you so much for this opportunity to celebrate you really, and to have this chance to just really... Just honor all of the incredible things you've done.

- Thanks, Becky.

I mean, I really should be celebrating you and all the public television work you've done over the years.

I've been really impressed.

- Thank you so much.

You know, we've talked before that I've met you when you were a governor, and I was the intern at the station and pursuing an Education Degree.

But you've been such a champion for education.

In this your last year as Senator, what a unbelievable year.

I'm sure when you started 2020, you didn't anticipate that your final year-- - Nobody anticipated in 2020 and it's not over.

I guess it is over but it's been quite a year.

- So what has been the biggest things you've learned in this year about leadership?

- The extraordinary scientific leadership we have in our country.

We sometimes take it for granted but the idea that we could have developed in eight months, vaccines for this unknown, absolutely new virus.

And usually it takes up to eight years.

And then at the same time produce tens of millions of doses.

So when they're approved, they can be distributed.

That's an extraordinary thing.

And if the United States didn't have the great companies and the great universities and the great scientists that we have, other countries in the world have some too.

That's one thing I learned about leadership this year.

Second thing I learned was that despite the back and forth that you could see in Washington, that when presented with a crisis, it's possible to work together.

I mean, Congress came together in the late spring and appropriated nearly, well, more than $3 trillion.

$1,200 for stimulus check, $600 Unemployment, 3 billion came to Tennessee money for schools and colleges.

All of that almost unanimously to try to help people who were hurt when the government basically shut down the economy.

So there are two things we learned this year.

And then a third thing I learned, is that even in the midst of all that, we can work together to do some good things.

I asked Senator McConnell in July, in the summer, to set aside two weeks in between all this election and impeachment and pandemic.

So we could work on the Great American Outdoors Act.

And a bipartisan group of senators and house members passed it.

People have been working on that for literally for 50 years, different parts of it.

And so we're able to pass the most important conservation and outdoor recreation legislation in the middle of all this.

So that told me something about leadership as well.

- Well, you are the ultimate public servant.

I don't know anyone who can compare their record to yours.

You have served Tennessee in so many capacities, you've served our nation.

And I think you're the only Tennessean to serve governor and US senator, and you had three full terms.

- Before a century ago, the legislature appointed the senators and that created a lot of graft and corruption and they passed a constitutional amendment and starting about 1916 or 17, that popular election of the United States senators.

And since that time, no other person who's been governor has been able to also become a senator.

Some have tried, but haven't been able to.

- And that's just astounding what you've accomplished.

And I wanna talk about some of those accomplishments, because they're vast, there are so many.

You also served as the US Secretary of Education.

You've been... We're in your home area right here in Maryville, Tennessee.

- We're in Maryville High School, where I walked every day-- - To school?

- [Alexander] Yeah.

- And you served as the President of the University of Tennessee, here in Knoxville.

So, so many capacities to serve the public.

And did it start right here in this high school?

Did it start in Maryville?

- Oh Sure, of course it did.

It started two blocks away in my backyard.

I guess you could say my mother had...

This is before preschool education to public.

My mother had a nursery school and kindergarten and a converted garage in our backyard at 121 Ruth Street.

And when I say this, young mothers can't believe it, but she had 25, three and four-year-olds in the morning.

And 25, five-year-olds in the afternoon.

And somehow she managed all that and she had nowhere to put me, so she put me there.

So I got a head start of considerable value.

And then I grew up in this wonderful community of Maryville, where everybody looks after you and make sure you're doing the right thing.

And if you're not, they encourage you to do it.

I went to this high school, which has such high standards.

I think it's recognized as having the highest academic standards of any public high school, as well as the State Championship football team.

So, church and the Boy Scout troop was right across the street.

So most everything that I am, I learned here, from my parents or the community of Maryville wherever I grew up.

- I know that you won the Boys State Governor.

So do you remember that speech?

Do you remember the heart of your speech as governor of Boys State?

- John Maddox, who ran Boys State for a number of years, and he called me up and said, "I'm gonna send you notes of what you said in your Governor's address in 1957."

And I thought, "Oh my goodness, what silly thing could I have said?"

One thing it called for was abolishing the Ku Klux Klan and passing civil rights laws.

And if you think back to 1957, that was a year after Clinton High School, which is not far from here was desegregated.

And Governor Frank Clement had to send in the National Guard to enforce that, which is a courageous thing for him to do then.

And in 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, was desegregated and Eisenhower had to federalize the National Guard to do it.

So that was very much on everybody's mind.

There was also something about right-to-work law in the speech, and I'm not sure why that was there.

Although it was important to me as governor, as the reason we have a lot of the auto industry here today.

But I was interested to see the mention of the civil rights laws in 1957, in my address as the Boys State governor.

But I put it up on the wall in my Senate office, in Washington, DC.

Looking back, I was proud of it.

- And I think that it's just fascinating.

What would you say today, to that 17-year-old Boys State governor?

- I'd say you shouldn't have peroxided your hair (laughs).

I had a flat top and had peroxide on (laughs), like a lot of kids.

- [Becky] It was bright blonde?

- Yeah, bright blonde hair.

I dunno what...

I know what Governor Frank Clement said all of us... At that time, Boys State was not at Tennessee Tech, it was at Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon.

And Governor Clement spoke at my Boys State governor inauguration.

And he said, "Someday, one of you boys is gonna grow up to be the real governor of Tennessee.

- Speaking about Governor Clement, and that really transformational work in civil rights, I heard you speak about the Black Lives Matter movement and what you've learned from fellow senators even, who are African-American, would you share that?

- I was talking about Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Who is a Republican conservative African American Senator, who was elected to first to be County Commissioner in Charleston and Chairman of the County Commission.

And he told a group of small group of senators at a Bible study that we had, that he had been stopped seven times in one year, for being a black man in the wrong place, while he was Chairman of the County Commission.

And he said recently it happened again as United States Senator.

And I told that story with his permission on the Senate floor because I thought white people don't know that.

I mean, I didn't know it, and I've tried to be sensitive to race relations in our state.

But I don't think about the fact of being a black man minding your own business and be stopped because you're black.

And I think that's a part of helping people who aren't African-American to understand the frustration in the black community.

I think that's a part of it.

That doesn't justify riots and all of that.

That disgraces the effort to have equal opportunity.

But I think Tim Scott story, is one that we all ought to listen to.

- Talking about that, civics education is so important and it's so important for us to have our strong democracy.

What are your thoughts about that?

And what can we learn from history?

- Well, we can learn what it means to be an American.

I've always thought we made a big mistake when we stopped teaching American history.

I don't mean civics, I mean, American history in our schools.

So our children could grow up learning what it means to be an American.

If you're born Japanese, you're just Japanese.

I mean, that's your culture.

But the United States, it has people of Japanese descent and Chinese descent, and Scotch-Irish descent and every descent.

We've got all this diversity.

What makes us one country is not our race or our background, it's a few principles.

Like all men are created equal and rule of law and Laissez-faire.

Just a few principles that form the American character.

And you have to learn those somewhere or you don't know what it is to be an American.

What makes this country special, is we've taken all that diversity and put it into one.

As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said, "We could use a little less pluribus and a little more unum."

And that's what I think the United States Senate is there for.

To take all these different ideas and see if we can work out something on civil rights or education or outdoors or whatever, that most of us can vote for in the country can live with.

In other words to unify us on difficult, controversial issues.

- What are you most proud of as US senator?

You have been the chair of probably the most powerful committee, you've served on four committees and I believe 10 sub committees and just your work is massive, what are you most proud of?

- Well, I'm proud of having had the opportunity to work with other senators and leave some footprints that I think are good for our country.

You don't do... You don't have any solos in the United States Senate, or even quartets.

It's kind of like a parade and you can be the parade organizer.

I tried to be that.

You take the Great American Outdoors Act, you kind of pick the music and you pick the route and you recruit the marchers and you even pick the drum major.

And then you march in the middle and hope the parade doesn't wind up in the ditch, which it will two or three times.

So an accomplishment in the Senate whether you're fixing No Child Left Behind, which was important.

Wall Street Journal said that was the biggest devolution of power from Washington to states in 25 years.

President Obama said it was a Christmas miracle, when it was passed.

Or the 21st Century Cures law, which has helped with the pandemic treatments and vaccines.

Senator McConnell said that was the most important law of that Congress.

Or the Great American Outdoors Act that the most important conservation law in 50 years.

Or the law that helps songwriters get paid a fair amount, all those things.

They were passed by bi-partisan parades in the Senate.

And I was a part of those parades, doing my best to keep the parade going where it was supposed to go.

So I feel...

I enjoyed that.

That was a real privilege to have a chance to do that and I feel good about it.

- Just tremendous.

But you always work to build consensus?

How important is it to build consensus?

- Well, the goal is to get a result.

When I was governor, it was to get the auto industry here, or to have the best four lane highway system, or to have a better schools program.

And as Senator, it was to fix No Child Left Behind.

So to get a result as governor, I had to work with a Democratic legislature.

And as United States senator, you have to get more than 60 of 100 votes, in order to pass a big bill because of our rules.

That means I have to get some Democrats, right?

Or I'm just up there spouting off and never getting anything done.

My view is it's hard to get here, the United States Senate, hard to stay here.

And while you're here, you might as well try to accomplish something good for the country.

So that's what I've tried to do.

Especially the last 10 years, I got out of the Republican leadership in the Senate because it was more of a political thing and I got tired of that.

And I've enjoyed working on the issues that I cared the most about over the last 10 years.

- Do you have a favorite president that you've worked with?

- Oh, that's interesting.

I've worked with a lot of them.

Going all the way back to Nixon.

I started with him.

They've all got their strengths and they've all got their weaknesses.

I thought a lot of George H.W.

Bush because of his decency and his courage as a warrior in World War II, his modesty, he never took credit for anything and he always put the country first.

- You sought the presidency at one time, didn't you?

- I did.

In 1996, I ran.

And then I tried again in 2000, but I really was kind of like the first Wright brothers airplane, I got a little bit off the ground and right back down to the ground, so that was it.

- That's a life lesson I think, is when you don't get maybe what you pursued.

Do you look back on that?

Did that stop you from moving forward?

Or did... Obviously it didn't-- - No, it didn't.

And I failed before.

I ran for governor in 1974 and I was 33, pretty audacious thing to do.

And I won the nomination, which I wasn't supposed to.

But then I lost the general election.

So I knew what it is to lose.

My grandfather used to tell me, "Aim for the top there's more room there."

And what I've discovered in life is that you aim there and you end up some place near there.

And I don't consider that a failure.

Senator Tim Scott's grandmother, maybe has it even better when she says, "Shoot for the moon and you'll end up among the stars."

And I like that because that's not failure to try and not quite succeed.

Most of our politics in our country, according to Samuel Huntington, who was a very famous political scientist, is about dealing with the disappointments of our failure to reach the high goals that we set for ourselves.

Like all men are created equal.

Well, we haven't made that yet but look where we've gone since 1957, when I was at Boys State or 1962 when I helped integrate the Vanderbilt Undergraduate School.

It was segregated by race then.

- Wow!

- And so we've made a lot of progress but we're still dealing with civil rights disappointments and rule of law disappointments.

So we're trying to form a more perfect union but we never have got a perfect one.

- We're work in progress.

- We are.

That's what Ben Hooks, who was the NAACP president, national one from Memphis, taught his students.

He would say, "America is a work in progress and we've come a long way, but we have a long way to go."

- The last time we visited, you were excited about the upcoming series from Ken Burns about the history of country music.

- Yeah.

- And you made a very passionate statement on the floor about that series and Ken's work.

How important is it for public television and other entities to tell these American stories?

- I can't imagine anything more important.

I mean, at a time when... We just talked about if we wanna have one country, we Americans have to understand, what does it mean to be an American?

Who are we?

How do you learn that?

Well, someone has to teach it.

And you learn it in school, but increasingly we don't teach it.

So Ken Burns is the most important storyteller today in our country of who we are as a country.

When he tells the story of the Civil War, when he tells the story of Vietnam, or of baseball or of jazz or of country music.

That reminds us of who we are.

And Ken Burns is the one who quoted Arthur Schlesinger Jr. saying, "We need less pluribus and more unum."

Ken Burns is probably our leading source of unum, unity in our country today.

- What advice would you give to a young Maryville student right now, who might have a vision of being where you are today?

- Well, first I'd say, look, I've seen it from a lot of angles.

In many ways, I've had the best seat in the House for a long time.

And as I leave the Senate, I look back on all of that is a great privilege.

I feel like I got up every day, thinking I might do something good for the country and I go to bed most nights thinking I have.

So point number one to the young student is it's worth doing and it's inspiring.

And it's a good way to spend your life or part of your life.

Second thing, I'd suggest on how to do it.

I do what I did, identify somebody you admire and volunteer to work for them and learn from them.

I wrote to Howard Baker back in 1966, when he was running for the Senate.

And I just admired what I knew about him, trying to build a two-party system, I didn't hear from him.

So when I was home for Easter, I was a law clerk down in New Orleans at the time, I got over there to seam and I volunteered for his campaign, lo and behold he won in November and I went to Washington with him.

So I learned from Judge Wisdom in New Orleans, for whom I was a law clerk.

I learned from Howard Baker.

I learned from Bryce Harlow in the White House.

And those three, in addition to my parents and all the people around Maryville who were my mentors, those three really taught me how to be in politics and what to do, how to do it.

There's no school for it really.

A Political Science course didn't teach it to you.

You've got to get out and do it.

So pick somebody like that, volunteer, do anything they want you to do that's legal, learn what they did well learn what they did wrong and then haul off and do it yourself.

- That is awesome.

It's great advice.

I wanna ask you about being governor.

You were young, you were a young governor, and had a young family, but really made significant change.

As you mentioned in education, in the auto industry.

Something that I've read that was fascinating to me, was you recognized or learned that you had to have a high quality four lane highway system to attract the auto industry, - Yeah, we did.

Remember 40 years ago, we didn't have the auto industry and we were the third poorest state in terms of family incomes.

We were in the middle of a national recession and so I was trying to figure out how do I raise family incomes?

Recruited Nissan, recruited Saturn.

But that's a few thousand jobs.

And I began to understand the real jobs come from the suppliers.

And so I asked the General Motors people, when I was recruiting Saturn, how do you locate the suppliers?

And they said, "With the computer?"

And I said, "What do you look for?"

And they said, "The best intersections have really good four-lane highways because we want to get the supplies to the main plants just in time to be put together with the car.

And we didn't have very good four lane highway, so we had three big road programs.

The biggest one being 1986.

So we get to upgrade our highways and spread the auto industry across Tennessee.

We doubled the gas tax to pay for it, which meant we had zero debt.

Every single Republican voted for that gas tax increase and the zero debt.

And the advantage of that is we paid for it and all that time, since 1986, we haven't had to use the money to reduce the debt and pay interest.

We paid roads.

So 1991, Governor McWherter added another road program in his first term.

So there were four in a short period of time.

By 1991, the tracker said Tennessee had the best four-lane highway system in the country.

And driving from Tennessee to Arkansas, was like driving from heaven to hell.

(Becky laughing) So that made a huge difference.

That and the right-to-work law and the location of those two big plants, Nissan, which is the biggest plant today in North America and General Motors at Spring Hill which is the largest General Motors facility today in the world.

They were magnets as the Volkswagen plant later became.

For all these suppliers and now Tennessee has about a thousand suppliers and almost every County has done more than anything, over the last 40 years to raise family incomes.

And the road system plus the right-to-work law were the keys to it.

- And then your education work.

The work you did to raise standards of teacher pay.

- I learned as I went along and I learned that just recruiting jobs wasn't enough that better schools meant better jobs.

Because you had to have the skills, that mean to work at the Saturn plant, you had to know algebra and you had to know communication skills and lots of other things.

So our schools and colleges weren't as good as they needed to be.

So we became the first state to pay teachers more for teaching well.

We created centers of excellence with university, Chairs of Excellence.

And one of my favorite things a little thing really is the Governor's Schools in the summer.

Where talented students can go for up to a month to learn.

Like at middle Tennessee, it's the School of the Arts, and sometimes they have 1000 kids.

- Wow!

- So it lifted up a lot of young people, helped where they horizons, didn't cost very much.

And subsequent governors have continued and expanded the Governor's School so we now have 11 of them.

- Oh, that is just tremendous.

In all of your career of public service, what would you say was your greatest joy?

- The joy I get is starting something and getting a result that helps create a better life for people.

And I've had a chance to do it with the auto industry as governor and with schools and the outdoors and for songwriters as Senator and that's a real privilege.

- Absolutely.

You've given so much to your country, to your state, to your community.

How did you make the decision to retire?

- Oh, that wasn't hard to do.

I mean, I've always admired people who knew when to step aside and felt sorry for people who didn't.

I'd like Ted Williams, he had a home run in his last at bat.

And one of my chiefs of staff Bill Long, was a Marine colonel came in one time when I was governor and said, "Governor, I have something I wanna tell you."

And I said, "What's that?"

He said, "People remember the last thing you do."

I said, "Why didn't you tell me that?"

He said, "You'll know."

And I've never been able to get that out of my mind.

- Wow.

- That made a difference to me.

I wanted to leave the Senate and leave public life at a time when what people remembered, and what I remembered about it, was that I was coming in as close to hitting a home run as I could.

Plus I'm 80 years old, so that's a pretty good time to start a new chapter and it's time to let someone else step up.

I mean, if you add up my eight years as governor, and 18 years of Senator, nobody else's served in both those jobs that long in Tennessee.

Doesn't seem that long to me, it goes so fast, but that's long enough.

It's time for the people to have a chance to pick someone else.

And I think they picked a very good Senator, Bill Hagerty.

- In your next phase of life, what's next?

And how will you enjoy retirement?

- That I'm like reading a very good book, a book where I've had the best seat in the House for a long time, thanks to the people of Tennessee.

And I'm gonna turn the page, expecting the next chapter will be a good chapter too but I don't know what it is (laughs).

I heard a basketball sportscaster talk about a basketball player and say, he'd be a much better player if he'd quit trying so hard and let the game just come to him.

So maybe I'll just quit trying so hard and let life come to me and hope the next chapter is as interesting, as some of the previous ones have been.

- I wanna thank you.

Especially in this past year of being such a tremendous leader at a time that we needed it, we needed consensus.

Thank you for all of the funding that you gave to so many during this crisis and just your continued influence.

Thank you for what you've done for Public Television, for Ready to Learn, there's just so much.

- You do a lot, not just an Upper Cumberland area but all across our state.

So I'm glad to have a little chance to help you do what you and your associates do on Public Television.

- You certainly have and we wish you the really...

The very best in this next chapter Of life.

- Thank you, Becky.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - I am Mike Galligan with the Law Offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCCTE, the Upper Cumberland's own PBS station, because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

- [Male Announcer] The law offices of Galligan and Newman, provide clients with large firm expertise as small firm, personalized care and service.

(upbeat music) - [Female Announcer] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)