Corker's independence brings bipartisan policies, Twitter war with Trump

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Corker legacy

Bob Corker will leave the U.S. Senate next Thursday after 12 years as one of the Senate's more independent and influential members, giving up his gavel as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he says he has tried to regularly reach across the aisle for bipartisan solutions.

With Congress and President Trump in a budget stalemate over funding a wall on the Mexican border that Corker calls a "juvenile" and "made-up fight," Corker has spent his last full week in office away from Washington, D.C., but still engaged in a Twitter war with the president.

Trump, who once considered Corker for vice president and later as a possible secretary of state, attacked the 5-foot, 7-inch senator as "Little Bob Corker" this week after Corker criticized Trump's decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria. In a Twitter message last week, Trump declared victory over the Islamic State and overruled many of his advisers, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned in protest over the withdrawal.

"It was a shock to our allies and doesn't make any sense right before you were getting ready to make these moves that would have so negatively affected ISIS," Corker said in an interview in Chattanooga this week. "We've broken relationships with the Kurds and the Arabs who are doing most of the fighting, and we've not seized on the opportunity that we have been building on for so long."

Corker's criticism of Trump is the latest in an ongoing sparring match between the two that began last year when the senator questioned whether Trump had the stability or competence to be a successful president. He also blasted Trump's divisive rhetoric after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Such criticism reflects Corker's independence, but it renewed claims from Trump this week that Corker is giving up his seat in Congress because he couldn't win re-election after his criticism of the president.

"Bob wanted to run and asked for my endorsement," Trump said in a tweet Sunday. "I said NO and the game was over."

But Corker bristles at such claims from the president, claiming he could have easily won re-election for a third term. He said Trump's claims against him were "just like Mexico is paying for the wall," which Corker tweeted with the hashtag "#AlertTheDayCareStaff" in reference to his earlier claim that Trump needs adults in the room to keep him in line.

Corker said he would serve two terms, and he stuck with his campaign promise.

What's next?

For Corker, who is used to long hours, trips around the globe and late-night talks with world leaders, the next three months or so will be a time for the 66-year-old builder-turned-politician to figure his next move.

Corker said he doesn't plan to retire and he wants to stay active in business and/or public policy. Corker said he will live in Chattanooga and maintain an office in the Volunteer Building downtown that he owns. Meanwhile, he will consider his options.

Corker didn't rule out the possibility of someday running for president, although he insisted he has not had any long-standing burning desire to become president. Corker also acknowledged that his brand of orthodox Republican thinking is not particularly popular right now in the populist era championed by Trump.

Corker is a lifelong Republican, a supporter of free trade and caps on government spending and a self-described deficit hawk who has called the mounting U.S. debt America's greatest threat. In contrast, President Trump has imposed import duties, boosted government spending and deficits and talked about getting tougher with Iran and adopting a more isolationist foreign policy than his GOP predecessors.

"We're in a period of populism and pleasing the public right now and nobody wants to talk about eating your spinach or making tough choices," Corker said.

Corker said he tries to speak directly to issues, including his unsuccessful attempts to try to cap government spending, change mandatory spending programs, raise the gasoline tax to pay for road improvements and pass a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

It's an independent and direct approach to problem solving he says he learned early when he started his own construction business with only $8,000 at the age of 25. He developed his skills later as a builder, developer, state finance commissioner and Chattanooga mayor before being elected as Tennessee's junior senator in 2006.

Finding his way in the Senate

"I'm a business guy and I ended up being a legislator in the United States Senate and I don't even like laws," Corker said in a year-end interview on WTCI-TV. "It's been quite a challenge, but I think I've made a difference and hopefully I have been able to reach across the aisle and be a statesman for Tennessee."

Corker decided to focus on fewer issues and become an expert in those - an approach he suggests for anyone coming into the Senate wanting to make a difference.

Corker, who joined the Senate Banking Committee in 2008, played a key role in the hearings on the auto industry bailout, even though he was the most junior member of the panel from the minority party. Corker stayed in the hearings, asked tough questions and developed a set of principles he thought should be followed by the auto companies getting government help to both ensure their survival and protect the taxpayers' investment.

After meeting with bondholders, analysts and auto executives in New York City, Corker developed a set of guidelines for bondholders, union members, auto dealers and the auto companies to share in a cost-cutting plan to help ensure an orderly, brief and effective bankruptcy reorganization for both GM and Chrysler.

On Dec. 23, 2008, in the waning days of the George W. Bush presidency, Corker got a call from the president saying he would be willing to give GM and Chrysler assistance but only under the "Corker principles." When President Obama came into office the next month, the new administration also used Corker's guidelines to shape its auto bailout plan.

Some conservative critics of Corker derided him as "bailout Bob" and Corker was booed by UAW members in Spring Hill, Tennessee, for pushing for wage and benefit changes. But Obama auto czar Steve Rattner and others credit Corker for helping shape an effective plan to keep GM and Chrysler afloat and ultimately rebound from the worst economic downturn since the Great Recession.

Corker, who joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his first term in Washington, D.C., also has focused his attention on international affairs over the past 12 years. Corker has been a frequent traveler around the globe, often going by himself to meet with foreign leaders to learn more about foreign affairs.

"I've been a doer and I've learned by doing through my life," Corker said. "If you travel by yourself you can have a more candid conversation with world leaders."

Corker often gets only a few hours of sleep during his weekend foreign trips. But a lack of sleep has been common through much of Corker's life. When he was building his own construction business, Corker said, he usually stayed awake all night at least once a week getting his paperwork done, and as Tennessee's finance commissioner under Gov. Don Sundquist in the 1990s Corker was often at the Tennessee Capital until 3 a.m.

Turning failures into success

For all of his business acumen and later political success, Corker has had setbacks in both his business and political career. After Corker built up and sold his Bencor Construction Co. in 1990, he attempted his first major office project, turning the former Sears store at Market and Sixth streets into the Market Court office building.

Corker borrowed $10.6 million from American National Bank with a personal guarantee, convinced that the downtown revival was coming with the opening of the Tennessee Aquarium and other planned downtown investments. But when the real estate market soured, Corker struggled to make the office project work and ultimately had to restructure the debt and sell the building for a dollar, plus the debt, to Fletcher Bright, after losing more than $2 million.

"That almost took me under and it certainly kept me awake many nights for almost a year and a half worrying if I could pay all my bills, which fortunately I ultimately did," Corker recalled.

From that experience, however, Corker said he learned about office development, which he quickly learned is far different than building or running shopping centers as he had done at Bencor for 12 years. That proved invaluable as Corker built his development company and later acquired Chattanooga's two biggest office landlords at the time - Stone Fort Land Co. and Osborne Enterprises.

By 1994, Corker was confident enough in his business success and passionate enough about his public service work to run for the U.S. Senate seat then held by Democrat Jim Sasser, who was vying to become Senate majority leader if he was re-elected. But Nashville heart surgeon Bill Frist, the son of HCA Founder Thomas Frist Sr., ultimately defeated Corker in a contentious GOP primary with a half dozen candidates.

During the 1994 Republican Senate primary - the first elected office sought by Corker - Frist's campaign manager, Tom Perdue, denounced Corker as "pond scum" and said he is "all that is filthy and bad about politics today." The Frist campaign attacked Corker for airing television ads criticizing Frist for not registering to vote until 1988 and for never previously voting in a GOP primary.

But the day after the August primary election, Corker was in Nashville to endorse Frist in his race against Sasser, which Frist won by a convincing 13-percentage-point margin over Sasser. Frist later became Senate majority leader for the Republicans, and when Frist retired in 2006 after two terms, as Corker is now doing, he urged Corker to run for his seat.

"While I lost that campaign in 1994, I met Don Sundquist and others on the campaign trail and it obviously opened up an opportunity when Sundquist asked me to be his commissioner of finance and administration," Corker said. "So sometimes what looks like a setback or a failure at the time ultimately proves to be beneficial in life. During those down times, you often learn the most."

A bipartisan approach to foreign affairs

Although the major political fights over foreign affairs have captured the most headlines, Corker said he is most proud of his work in the Senate on many of his less controversial, and usually bipartisan, bills, including his End Modern Slavery initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Electrify Africa Act.

Such measures have helped reduce the estimated 27 million people still living in some type of slavery around the world, helped reduce the spread of AIDS and provided electricity to many of the 600 million people without power in sub-Saharan Africa. Corker not only pushed legislation to help limit slavery but also helped establish a public-private partnership known as the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, which has a goal of reducing slavery by 50 percent in targeted populations within seven years.

Corker also was able to use his international stature to help introduce and woo Germany's biggest car company, Volkswagen, to his hometown. The final negotiations to secure VW's auto assembly plant in Chattanooga were ironed out, in part, at Corker's North Chattanooga home during 2008 in a bipartisan sales effort from then-Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, and local political leaders, including Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, a Republican.

In a farewell tribute to Corker this month on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Corker "is a builder by trade and a fixer by nature."

Tennessee's senior senator, Lamar Alexander, who will retire from the U.S. Senate in two years, praised his Tennessee colleague as "always a man on a mission with little regard of the obstacles in the way."

"He has voted with the majority of Republican senators 85 percent of the time, but he always has been a conservative who prizes results over speeches," Alexander said.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.