CAMPAIGN '96: WHERE'S THE BEEF?

HE SAYS BOB DOLE HAS GOT "NO ideas." And Pat Buchanan has got the "wrong" ones. But walking the path of hubris that led Gary Hart off a cliff in 1988, Lamar Alexander insists he alone has the "new ideas" a new millennium deserves. So goes the sound bite. But Alexander's signature proposals don't always live up to their billing. Many have been kicked around for years, dropped as unwise, shirk the tough calls or come with so few details that they raise more questions than they answer.

Take Alexander's biggest idea, captured in his refrain that Americans need to "expect...