Former staffer in Richard Nixon's White House, governor of Tennessee, Secretary of Education (under George Bush). Presidential bids in 1996 and 2000, with his trademark campaign-trail lumberjack shirt a populist disguise for a longtime insider pol. He may have begun the craze for school vouchers, seen by some as a way to funnel tax dollars into Christian schools (as payback for their Reagan/Bush support) and into the Edison Project of his friend Chris "Channel One" Whittle.