When I was elected governor in 1978, hurt feelings and repressed pride—among descendants of slaves, Confederates, and those labeled hillbillies—had created a state of citizens with low self-esteem and low aspirations. In chapter 26 of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I write about how Tennessee ’86 helped build Tennesseans’ self-confidence. In my second term inaugural address in January 1983, I had asked each of the 3,000 places with names that Tennesseans call home to do three things— “(1) Define what is special about your community; (2) During 1986, celebrate that something special; and (3) Invite everyone who ever lived there to come home to join the celebration.” During my reelection campaign in 1982, my focus shifted from the state Capitol to communities. Honey and I had worked in forty-five “community days” on self-help projects ranging from new libraries to shelters for abused women. I had come to understand that communities—not governors—decide whether to fix schools and prepare for new jobs. Too often, Tennessee communities had set low goals. I also knew that the guitarist Chet Atkins was right when he said, “Be careful where you aim, because you’re likely to get there.” The homecoming idea was that, if each town or city understood and celebrated its strengths, it was more likely to set and reach high goals. The state would prosper, community by community. During 1986, five thousand homecoming celebrations erupted in 540 communities—so many that I gave up trying to attend them. Four decades later, Tennesseans still talked about that spirit. In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR is out now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/.../Lam…

I’m looking forward to my conversation this Friday at the Texas Tribune Festival (@TexasTribune) with Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake), NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, as we discuss how Republicans should learn to work with the President. I'll also be signing copies of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, following the discussion at the STATION Austin in the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown. TribFest brings together the state’s boldest leaders, thinkers and innovators for an up-close look at the issues affecting your life. From education and the economy to energy, healthcare, technology, public safety, culture and the arts, discover conversations you won’t find anywhere else. Explore the ideas and actions transforming our state and join in candid, on-the-record conversations with real accountability. You can learn more about the event here: festival.texastribune.org/?u… In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR is out now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/.../Lam…

Bryce Harlow told me what advice he had given Nixon in 1972 “that would have hurt a few people but saved the presidency.” In Chapter 14 of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I write about a 1985 letter to me from Harlow describing how President Eisenhower had handled a difficult incident. "Dear Lamar: ...we’re talking of 31 years ago—1954. The Dixon-Yates matter was in full flower—a festering scandal involving, among others, the Director of the Budget. … the integrity of his whole Administration was coming into question. We staff functionaries...laboriously contrived an apologia—a mealy-mouthed, evasive, convoluted, turgid bureaucratic squid squirt—intended to blot out all possibility of further suspicion. …With a flourish, Jim Hagerty handed Ike our handiwork. We all sat silently as he intently read every word. Suddenly, he threw the statement over Hagerty’s head and out into the middle of the Oval Office. Plainly, he was M-A-D, and he showed his famed temper. His blue eyes flashing, his 5-Star look on, his face brick red, he had at us with his best guttural ultimation: 'You listen here, boys,” he said, “I’ll never put out any drivel like that as long as I’m around this place. You’ve got to understand that the right thing to do in cases like this is always to tell the truth. Put out the facts very fast, don’t get cute about it, just say exactly what the facts are, and make it as simple as you can and as short as you can. That way the whole damn mess will blow over and be gone in a week or 10 days, and the public will back you for being honest about it. Do it this way like you boys have it here—and we’ll all be up to our necks in trouble and will deserve it.' ...As soon as we got the facts out, the whole thing died away. That, incidentally, was what I urged that Nixon and Stans do with Watergate in 1972” This is an excerpt from my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, where I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future.      THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress.      You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

At age fifty-five, Ronald Reagan had come late enough to public life to have thought about what he wanted to do and say. He knew why he wanted to be president—to face down an evil empire abroad (the Soviet Union) and an arrogant empire at home (Washington, DC). In chapter 25 of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I write about how Reagan stuck to his guns, and he supported Cabinet members who also did. His education secretary, Bill Bennett, told me that he had once walked into a Cabinet meeting expecting to be in trouble for media criticism of his conservative views. “Well, what’s wrong with the rest of you fellas?” Reagan asked as Bennett took his seat. With his humor, he even made the press like him, even though most disagreed with him. At a Gridiron Dinner, Reagan strode in smiling, waited until the applause died down, and then said to the journalists, “Thank you very much. I know how hard it is to clap with your fingers crossed.” Reagan seemed to understand the need for mature, broad-gauged advisers. He created his own “team of rivals” by selecting as vice president his principal primary opponent, George H.W. Bush, and then hiring Bush’s campaign manager, Jim Baker, to be White House chief of staff. Eventually, he hired another primary opponent, Howard Baker, as chief of staff. Reagan surrounded himself with advisers who had broad experience. They had lived and grown and fought and won and lost in a variety of life’s arenas. They had learned to face challenges, unravel complexities, and survive. Such individuals were less likely to become lost in the Washington, DC, maze than someone without such experiences. Reagan was not afraid to hire strong people who had actually done something. These men did for the president what Bryce Harlow said Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, Sherman Adams, did. “He kept the trash away from the president so he could concentrate on the crucial matters, and made sure it was all properly coordinated and staffed out before it reached the president.” “JFK did not have a chief of staff,” Harlow said. “He ran the place like a country store. Lyndon Johnson was his own chief of staff, his own everything else.” Jimmy Carter came to Washington, DC, basically never having been there before, and brought with him a team of aides who also rarely had been there before. By the end of his term, Carter was turning to more experienced hands, but it was too late to salvage his presidency. Reagan’s experienced “team of rivals” helped save his presidency. In 1987, when Reagan fell into trouble over the Iran–Contra scandal, he telephoned Howard Baker, who was in Miami on a family vacation. Joy Baker answered the president’s call. “Where’s Howard?” Reagan asked. “At the zoo with the grandchildren,” Joy Baker answered. “Wait ’til he hears about the zoo I have for him,” Reagan said. Reagan made Baker his chief of staff and told him to get to the bottom of the scandal. Giving Baker that assignment was not without risk. Fourteen years earlier, Baker had helped bring down another Republican president: Richard Nixon. “We are here to save the president, if he deserves to be saved,” Baker told A.B. Culvahouse Jr., the new White House counsel. This is an excerpt from my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, where I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

I often think about what might be happening with the Iran War today if George H.W. Bush were President instead of Donald Trump. In Chapter 29 of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I write about how, based upon his success with the Gulf War in 1991, Bush might have handled things differently. I give Trump credit for taking action against Iran’s building nuclear weapons and terrorizing the Middle East. Sooner or later, some American President was going to have to use force to stop that behavior. But the Gulf War cost the US $ 6-8 Billion because Bush persuaded US allies to pay for most of it. Trump has asked for $200 billion more in emergency funding for the Iran War and, other than Israel, didn’t consult allies before launching the Iran war. Bush built national support for the Gulf War by getting Senate approval to use force; Trump did not. After months of consultation and preparation, the ground war to force Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait began at 8 p.m. on Saturday, February 23, 1991, at 8 p.m. Five days later, President Bush announced that Kuwait was liberated. The Iran War has lasted for six months with an unclear objective and no end in sight. George Bush was most comfortable with national security and foreign affairs, and, arguably, no president was better at it. His demeanor and skill in handling the disintegration of the Soviet Union and reunification of Germany, and his decisiveness, combined with restraint in the Gulf War, set a high standard. He had spent most of his adult life in Washington or overseas serving as a congressman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, ambassador to the United Nations, chief of the US Liaison Office in China, director of the CIA, and vice president of the United States. In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future.      THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress.      You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

Here's a rule I learned early on as governor. Don't be afraid to put all your eggs in one basket as long as it's the right basket. In Chapter 22 of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I write about how at my first White House dinner, President Carter said, "Governors, go to Japan, persuade them to make in the United States what they sell here." So off I went, recruited Nissan to Tennessee, and before very long, Tennessee had about half of all the Japanese capital investment in the United States. That helped raise family incomes in our state and brought the auto industry to our state. It's the most important thing I could have done. And I figured that, well, I could go to Europe, I could go to different places, I could work on different things, but I'm only one governor. So if I focus most of my attention on Japan and the auto industry, maybe I'll get a better result. After realizing how uneasy the Japanese were about doing business outside their own country, my strategy was to create a fourth advantage by doing everything I could to make Nissan feel at home in Tennessee. During my first twenty-four months as governor, I spent eight working weeks solely on Japan relations—three weeks in Japan and the rest visiting with an endless stream of Japanese visitors to Tennessee—from the National Diet, newspapers, chambers of commerce, and Nissan. Masahiko Zaitsu, from Nissan’s Los Angeles office, was a guest at the governor’s residence eleven times in 1979 and 1980. Our children began to think of him as some sort of Japanese uncle. In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future.      THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress.      You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

Jon Kyl’s life is a reminder of how important it is for our country to attract experienced, honest, and purposeful men and women to public life. In the US Senate, Jon always knew what he was talking about. As a result, other senators listened to him, and he rose to leadership positions in the Republican caucus.  He was a conservative who used his time in the Senate to apply his principles, while often working with those with whom he did not agree, to get a result. I valued his friendship and have great respect for his life and service to our country. nytimes.com/2026/09/17/us/po…

I was grateful to receive the Governor's Lifetime Stewardship Environmental Award, but in truth, I should have been honoring Gov. Bill Lee. Like Gov. Bill Haslam before him, Bill Lee has been a conservation governor. He expanded and improved maintenance of state parks, used agricultural easements to create more conservation land, encouraged economic development in non-brownfields instead of greenfields, built mountain biking trails on National Forest Service lands, and persuaded the legislature to appropriate $12 million for the Institute for Conservation Leadership and the Sciences at Maryville College to train a new generation of outdoor leaders. Tennesseans have many things to be proud of, but at the top of the list is the Great Tennessee Outdoors. More Tennesseans have hunting and fishing licenses than vote in our party primaries. It is good to have leadership that preserves these outdoor experiences for ourselves and the next generations. You can learn more here: tn.gov/environment/news/2026… In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

When you start to speak, “If you would start by saying, ‘Instead of making a speech, let me tell you a story,’ someone might actually listen to what you have to say," ROOTS author Alex Haley told me after hearing me speak when I was governor of Tennessee. In his new memoir, IMPATIENCE IS A VIRTUE, Mitch Daniels (@purduemitch) shows that somewhere along his path through multiple public offices, he also learned the importance of storytelling. Mitch’s chapters reveal a capacity for remembering and telling stories that entertain, teach, and sometimes make the reader laugh out loud. In digging up these stories, the author had much fertile ground to plow, from his arrest as a student to attempting to balance the federal budget in the Reagan White House, to helping to create new medicines at a giant pharmaceutical company. He tells of nights spent with Hoosier families on his way to being Governor of Indiana to holding the line on tuition increases as president of Purdue University. With modesty and conviction, Mitch Daniels recounts how he succeeded in every enterprise he undertook, providing inspiration and lessons for any American who understands that public service is the surest way to help the most people and to be a part of keeping our Republic from falling apart. IMPATIENCE IS A VIRTUE is out now from Lyons Press/Globe Pequot Publishing Group. You can order a copy of IMPATIENCE IS A VIRTUE here: simonandschuster.com/books/I…

To give Delmar an example of the “function screen,” I told him the story of the Nashville doctor who had rarely ever voted, who came by my Nashville office on a February morning in 1994 when I was preparing to run for president. As I write in the prologue to my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, the doctor said, “I’m going to run for the United States Senate.” “Why would you do that?” I asked. “Why would you give up being one of the world’s leading heart transplant surgeons?” He said, “Today, I can fly to Chattanooga, cut out a beating heart, put it on ice in an Igloo cooler, make sure I get back to Vanderbilt Hospital within four hours, and perform an eight-hour operation. A year later, I might meet one person on the street who will thank me for saving his or her life. If I’m a senator, maybe I can save a million lives.” At age forty-two, Dr. Bill Frist (@bfrist) won that Senate race and, working with President George W. Bush, created PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), investing $120 billion to combat HIV/AIDS. That saved twenty-six million lives. When he retired after two terms, he chaired the global board of The Nature Conservancy, but never again will he be able to help as many people as he did as a senator. No one doubts that private citizens—from Edison to Einstein to Billy Graham—can make a huge difference. But Dr. Frist learned that public service is the surest way to unleash our country’s potential to help the most people. The stories in my memoir are about that lesson, along with others that helped me, as both a governor and United States senator, to wake up every morning thinking that I might be able to do something good for our state or country, and to go to bed most nights thinking that I had. In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

I wish that anyone who believes that the American Republic will not survive in the midst of all the current political goings-on could have been with me in Lebanon, Tennessee, on Tuesday when I met with more than 200 Wilson County high school students. The students asked me questions about my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, in which I do my best to persuade, hopefully inspire, others to believe that public service is the surest way to help the largest number of people and to be part of keeping our Republic from falling apart. I told them that I woke up every day as senator and governor thinking I could do something to help my state or country and went to bed most nights thinking that I had. Tuesday's program impacted 14 teachers and administrators and 219 students (who were for the most part juniors and seniors) studying U.S. Civics and Government, JROTC, US History, and involved with Youth in Government (YIG) or Mock Trial. The students and their teachers attend/teach at: Green Hill High School (@greenhillhigh) Lebanon High School (@lebanon_high) Mt. Juliet High (@mtjulietbears) Watertown High School Wilson Central High School Moreover, the recording will be shared in U.S. Civics and Gov't classes across the district, impacting 1,500 students this school year, and potentially many more when we share it with other schools and districts across Tennessee. Several students told me afterwards that they intend to spend at least part of their lives elected to the city council or legislature, or even as governor, or go to work for someone who has been elected. In THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

On Tuesday morning, September 11, I was teaching at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School in Cambridge. As the fall semester was getting underway, I watched in horror as the television showed the second terrorist plane crashing into the Twin Towers. In Chapter 34 of my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, I write about how I tried to call our daughter Kathryn, who was living in Brooklyn. I thought about how five years earlier, during the presidential race, no candidate except Sen. Richard Lugar had even mentioned terrorism. It was Friday before the first Southwest plane flew to Nashville. I was one of three passengers. Before boarding, I removed my shoes, some clothes, was patted down, searched, and delayed—experiencing for the first time the permanent indignity that a few terrorists had inflicted on tens of millions of travelers. I watched the national conversation shift from what pulls us apart to what pulls us together. Suddenly, Americans were again saying that diversity is important, but that our greatest strength is something different. “No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations into a single culture,” was how Margaret Thatcher explained it. Throughout most of our country’s life, the national conversation had been a public classroom for teaching belief in the principles that allowed citizens of all backgrounds to say, “We are all Americans.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, as President Theodore Roosevelt was inveighing against “hyphenated Americanism,” institutions from Boys and Girls Scouts to Kiwanis Clubs “Americanized” a surge of immigrants. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt made sure that those who charged the beaches of Normandy knew they were fighting for Four Freedoms. The chief Americanizing institution was the public school. “The public school was created to help immigrant children learn the three Rs, and what it means to be an American, with a hope they would go home and teach their parents,” American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker said. McGuffey’s Readers sold 120 million copies to create a common culture of literature, patriotic speeches, and historical references, according to Diane Ravitch. But for forty years, the conversation about what it means to be an American had been heading in a different direction. New waves of immigration, new cultural attitudes, and new scholarships had been challenging the notion that the greatest accomplishment of the United States of America, after establishing freedom and democracy, had been to find a way to unite its diversity into one country. Public schools had become reluctant to teach core values because teachers were afraid to answer the question, “Whose values?” Americans were ignoring the country’s original motto—three Latin words engraved above the presiding officer’s chair in the Senate, 𝘌 𝘱𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘮 — “Out of many, one.” “We have too much pluribus and not enough unum,” filmmaker Ken Burns said. “If it were many out of one, we would be the United Nations, not the United States of America,” Huntington wrote. At least for a while, America’s response to 9/11 was to celebrate unity over diversity. After 9/11, television did the Americanizing, displaying patriotic exercises, prayers in prime time, President Bush’s visit to the Islamic Center, and NFL players reciting the Declaration of Independence. At Thanksgiving, Bush spoke of “the American character.” At the Kennedy School, Al Gore said, “We should honor their memories by fighting for the values that bind us together as a country.” The Republican and Democratic presidential contestants of the previous year were saying the same thing, invoking a traditional, value-based national identity. Americans were listening. This is an excerpt from THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR.

Reagan’s experienced “team of rivals” helped to save his presidency. In 1987, when Reagan fell into trouble over the Iran-Contra scandal, he telephoned Howard Baker, who was in Miami on a family vacation. Joy Baker answered the president’s call. “Where’s Howard?” Reagan asked. “At the zoo,” Joy Baker answered. “Wait ‘til he hears about the zoo I have for him,” Reagan said. Reagan made Baker chief of staff and asked him to get to the bottom of the scandal. Giving Baker that assignment was not without risk. Fourteen years earlier. Baker had helped to bring down another Republican president: Richard Nixon. “We are here to save the president, 𝘪𝘧 𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘥,” Baker told the new White House counsel, A.B. Culvahouse, Jr. His “team of rivals” cleaned up the scandal, and Reagan left office on a high note. This is an excerpt from my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, where I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future.      THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress.      You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

“If you want to feel like the butler, try being vice president,” Joe Biden told me in 2012. I began working in the Nixon White House in 1969 at a desk in Bryce Harlow’s West Wing office fifty feet from the Oval Office. After six months, Harlow carved space from his secretary’s office to create this cubbyhole office for me. When this photo was taken forty-three years later, the tiny office still was there and being used by then–Vice President Biden’s chief of staff. Proximity to the Oval Office makes even a cubbyhole a prized possession.” This is an excerpt from my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, where I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…

“On Wednesday, January 17, 1979, Democrat leaders swore me, a Republican, into office three days early to stop Gov. Ray Blanton from pardoning prisoners who had paid cash for their release. As I talk to reporters after taking the oath, Honey holds the family Bible while Leslee, seven, Drew, nine, and Kathryn, five, stand in front and Lt. Gov. John Wilder, Speaker Ned McWherter, and Chief Justice Joe Henry watch.” This is an excerpt from my new memoir, THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP, where I paint portraits of the presidents I worked with, tell stories about what I saw behind the scenes, and recount the lessons I learned about American politics and our country’s future. THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP is available now from @PostHillPress. You can use this link to order: simonandschuster.com/books/T…