For the first time in quite a while, former Tennessee Senator Bob Corker — three years out of office and speaking from his business office in Chattanooga on Tuesday — directly addressed a Memphis audience: the members and guests of the Rotary Club of Memphis via Zoom.
At some point in the discourse with the Rotarians, Corker got the obvious question (“Are you running for president?”) and answered it this way: “ So yeah, when you’re in the Senate, and you’re chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and all that, you know, you’re walking through the airport, going places, and people will come up to you. And by the way, this happens with probably a majority of Senators, You know, people ask you, why don’t you run for president? You know, there’s always somebody that likes you.”
He would add, in an aside “and people who don’t, too,” before continuing. “You know, sometimes, I would think about it. When I was in the Senate, though, I wasn’t one of those people who woke up every morning and thought I saw a president when I was shaving. I was never that person.”
Reflecting on his standing at the moment with a party still dominated by the absent Donald Trump, Corker acknowledged, “I’m a little out of step right now. That’ll change; it’ll change actually pretty rapidly, I think, but I’m a little out of step. … I don’t have any indications or thoughts today that I will do it. Is it totally out of the question? No, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Let me put it this way I’m not doing things today to make sure that my name is spread all around the country. But I do want to be involved in this conversation. I do want to elect the leader that not only has the mental maturity and demeanor to try to do those things that will unite our country and solve long-term problems And has the ability to share that vision with the rest of the country and pull people together. So we’ll see what happens.
On the other hand, he added, “I don’t want to be one of those pseudo-senators hanging around and making comments about what everybody’s doing. But I do also play a role and, and have future discussions about our country. I’m doing so now.”
Corker was blunt about not being out of the action on Capitol Hill per se. “I don’t mean this to sound haughty. I just haven’t missed it.”
As Corker explains it, “I’m back doing business. I’m chairman of a company that runs insurance for the self-employed. It’s got a great future. The development operation and young developers here who are the best that I’ve ever worked with. I’ve been providing equity for them, but also helping to enhance their abilities. And then I’m working as a special advisor for Jeffrey’s, which is a global investment bank.”
Inevitably, Corker, who had something of a public falling-out with former President Trump over the 2017 Charleston, Virginia, white supremacist gathering and other matters, was asked for his views about political affairs, past and present. “I had a pretty raucous relationship with the Trump administration and it went both ways. But one of the things they did do, which was outstanding, is this new accord in the Middle East, one in which normal relations have been restored between Israel and various Arab principalities. You just can’t imagine how much it has changed the Middle East and what’s happening and the activity between Israel and the Arab countries there. And if we can build on that, what a tremendous opportunity for political change.”
The former senator seemed ambivalent about the issue of restoring the agreement, suspended by Trump, between the United States and other countries with Iran on the issue of non-nuclear proliferation. He recalled trying, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, to get former President Barack Obama to bring the Iran matter to the Senate in the form of a treaty, but failing. “We should do these things by treaty,” he said. “What I hope won’t happen is that Biden rushes in to try to reconstruct the deal on the terms that it was put in place.”
And he was somewhat evasive about whether the controversial new Georgia voting laws are unduly restrictive. “As I understand it, New York State is far more restrictive than the state of Georgia with the new law. I think that the thing we got to worry about tonight is just this massive reaction. … We should make it easy for everybody to vote, we want people to vote, to be as easy as it possibly can be, and with people being able to identify rightly who they are, to make sure we get as many people out to vote as possible. But anything that might be thought of, you know, causing one race or another to have less access, that’s inappropriate.”
Corker was asked his point of view about a number of political figures still serving in Washington. About his Senate successor, Marsha Blackburn, for example, he was diplomatic: “Everybody would acknowledge that we’re from a little bit different brands in the Republican Party. We’ve had a warm relationship anyway. Let’s be frank about it. And we were the Republican party of yesterday. She probably is a little bit more representative today than some one of my ilk.”
Others of what he considered his “ilk” to be? Former Tennessee Senators Howard Baker, Lamar Alexander, and Bill Frist, the latter of whom he had succeeded in the Senate.
“My evolution was one of pragmatism and just a way that both sides of the aisle could solve problems. Hey, look, I could count. I went to public schools here, but I could count, and I knew you had to count to make something happen.”
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