Honney Alexander chuckled when asked if she new that the New York Times declared the other day that her husband's signature plaid shirts were selling out in local department stores.
"He's never been accused of being a fashion-plate," she joked in response. Not that she should mind, because those little plaid shirts have gone a long way in making her husband a household name--at least in Republican households.
She could be the perfect politician, able to make her point to a group of people, under the pressure of CBS cameras and even match wisecracks with the audience, but she is not running for any office.
Her husband is, though.
Honney Alexander, wife of Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander, is traveling across the country, oftentimes without her husband, to spread the word for the former Tennessee governor in his bid to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Busily campaigning for her husband, Honney Alexander was able to squeeze an interview with The Dartmouth in between a session with WXTL radio and an appearance at the Upper Valley Senior Center in Lebanon, where she was asked about the shirts.
Taking a break at a local coffee shop Alexander explained that although she is not the presidential candidate, she is still very involved in the campaign.
"I'm not running for office [but] I'm a surrogate candidate," she said.
Alexander said she often finds herself traveling and campaigning for her husband three to seven days a week. Most of the time, she said, she will be in one place speaking and her husband will be somewhere else, in an effort to cover as much ground as possible.
Alexander said her role in the campaign is to bring, "Lamar's message to the voters."
Although she and her husband do not agree on everything, Alexander said they agree on the proverbial big picture.
"We don't see eye to eye always," Alexander said. "Philosophically we start at the same point. We value our family. We value our church. We value our neighbors. That carries forth into the political philosophy we share."
Although she tries to speak for her husband when she speaks alone, Alexander said she does have her own political concerns.
"I try to represent him, [but] I have my own special interests," she said. She said her interests include things like motherhood, children and community service.
But Alexander said she sometimes finds herself having to ad-lib responses to questions on issues with which she is not entirely familiar or does not know her husband's position.
Alexander said when she is asked something "off [her] radar screen," she answers with what she feels is the right answer and most of the time her husband agrees.
She said she was once asked a question concerning the Republican platform and was unsure of the answer. She answered the question and later asked her husband about her response.
"He said it was perfect," Alexander said.
Armed with a catchy sound bite, Alexander was not forced to improvise when discussing her husband's position on education.
Her husband thinks it is important for schools to prepare students for the "21st century and not the 19th," she said.
But Alexander said her husband's solutions are different from Democrats' solutions because he emphasizes local control and reduced government interference.
As an example of the kind of programs her husband supports, Alexander mentioned a system in Tennessee where local corporations donate money to a local high school that supplies a lot of employees to the company.
Emphasizing her husband's campaign strategy to depict himself as a "Washington outsider," Alexander said it is essential for a national politician not have spent his entire career in Washington.
"Real people don't worry about congressional sub-committees. They worry about job security, their children's future, education," she said.
She said real people's concerns get lost in the Washington atmosphere of pure politics too frequently.
After the interview, Alexander presented her husband's political perspective to local residents at the Upper Valley Senior Center in Lebanon where she screened one of her husband's promotional videos and answered questions concerning his presidential aspirations.
The video, which ran about 15 minutes, explained Lamar Alexander's personal background and outlined the qualifications that would make him a good president. It outlined the theme of his campaign, what he calls restoring the "Promise of American Life."
In the video, Alexander explained the three central tenets aimed at bringing back that promise: creating jobs and capital; limiting the role of the Federal government and increase "personal responsibility."
He said, in the video, that "personal responsibility" means taking responsibility for not only one's own actions, but also becoming involved in one's community and taking responsibility for the community's well-being.
After the video, Honney Alexander took questions from the audience for an additional 15 minutes. The questions addressed issues like Bosnia, health care and her husband's propensity for red-and-black plaid shirts.
