The Senate will be worse off without Lamar Alexander

ABOUT THE only light note of a grim Christmas season on Capitol Hill was provided, characteristically, by Lamar Alexander. At the end of a gruelling negotiation of the $900bn stimulus that President Donald Trump belatedly signed this week, the 80-year-old Tennessean, who will retire from the Senate in January, took to a piano in the Hart building to play carols.

Bipartisan admirers of Mr Alexander, one of the last reliable dealmakers on the Hill, gathered round. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota swayed to the performance while Susan Collins of Maine filmed it on her phone. Tim Kaine of Virginia joined his fellow former governor on the harmonica for a rendition of “Go Tell It on the Mountain”. Billing themselves as “The Amateurs”, the two senators once played together at a music festival on the Tennessee-Virginia border. Theirs was a rare bipartisan act in what has been by some length the most unproductive Congress ever. “I’m really going to miss both his friendship and leadership,” said Mr Kaine of his departing co-performer.

The regard for Mr Alexander on the left is not for his moderation, exactly. As he underlined during an interview in his Senate office—amid a clutter of packing-cases and ancient campaign souvenirs—he is fiercely partisan on most issues. He has an A rating from the National Rifle Association and a mediocre...