BusinessTN

In the waning days of the presidential campaign, as both candidates grasped for rhetoric or revelation that would be a stick in the spokes of the competition, Alan Lowe was running a different race. The veteran political librarian, executive director of the University of Tennessee's Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, was rushing to get the center's new $17 million facility ready for dedication on Nov. 15. The ceremony would coincide with the birthday of its namesake, the UT alum and former U.S. senator famous for putting principle before party. It would coincide also with what both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama—like Gov. George W. Bush before them—promise will be a new era of bipartisanship in Washington. If that promise comes to pass, one mission of the Baker Center may have been accomplished.

Launched in 2003 from temporary quarters in UT's Hoskins Library, the Baker Center is the product of a $6 million Congressional endowment to honor and continue the senator's legacy of public service. While it houses the papers of Baker and other native notables, Lowe wanted the center to function as something more than an archive. So he spent what he recalls as surreal hours on Baker's back porch in Huntsville, discussing with the senator ways to turn tangible the amorphous concept of "civic engagement." The resulting mission statement is ambitious. It includes creating lesson plans for civic education in high schools and middle schools; hosting scores of workshops and international conferences, often with companion courses for UT students; researching and developing public policy strategies on energy, national security, the environment and health care; and bringing civility to American political discourse.

It's hard to say, at this moment, which goal is more daunting: Helping the Republic of Georgia develop an energy strategy, or getting Republicans and Democrats to work together. The first goal has been temporarily suspended; the second is still on the white board, charged to the Baker Center's Civility Task Force—for whom, Lowe admits, turning philosophy into practice will be tough: "What we don't want, at the end of the day, is another report that says, 'Why don't we all just get along?'"

Tennessee Democratic Party spokesman Wade Munday says a true political leader—like Baker—can rally the rank-and-file to abandon divisive discourse. Bill Hobbs, Munday's GOP counterpart, suggests campaign rancor is perpetuated by partisan grandstanding that continues into, and undermines, the process of government.

"Baker talks about a process a lot," Lowe says, "how to get a structure going where you can have disagreements, but it's based on common respect for each other, so you can keep moving things on down the road." The task force has begun building that structure, he says, by establishing standards—best practices for civic engagement—illustrated by historical examples. Exhibit A is Baker, who, from Watergate to the Panama Canal, followed his conscience across party lines.