TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/030689/03068900.039

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NATION, Page 18

COVER STORIES: Is This Goodbye?

A Senate committee stuns Bush by rejecting Tower's nomination

By George J. Church


    After a month as President, George Bush had his first chance
to make a splash on the world scene. But as he began a series of
one-on-one meetings with some of the foreign leaders who went to
Japan for the funeral of Emperor Hirohito, Bush suffered a slap
from which not even the 6,800 miles between Washington and Tokyo
could remove the sting. Disregarding fervent pleas by the
President, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 11 to 9 along
strict party lines to reject his nomination of former Senator John
Tower to be Secretary of Defense. The main reason: Democrats on the
committee said they could not accept the Administration's claims
that Tower had shaken the excessive drinking habits he displayed
in the 1970s.

    Bush, for whom loyalty is close to a religion, quickly
announced that he would carry the fight to the Senate floor. A vote
by the full chamber may take place this week, assuming Tower does
not take the White House off the hook by withdrawing. Considering
that the Democrats hold a 55-to-45 majority -- and that, for all
the sanctimonious clucking about Tower's personal habits, last
week's vote was overtly partisan -- Bush is likely to suffer a
second and perhaps more damaging loss.

    Even if, against all odds, Tower squeaks through to
confirmation, he will be seriously damaged. As Pentagon boss, his
effectiveness would be hampered by having to deal with a hostile
Senate Armed Services Committee whose chairman, Georgia Democrat
Sam Nunn, had led the battle against him.

    It was difficult to see how Bush could emerge a winner from
the Tower fiasco. Whatever the outcome, his personal and political
judgment has once again been called into question. He insisted on
appointing Tower, a longtime political ally, over the objections
of aides who knew the nominee's vulnerabilities. The decision was
all too reminiscent of Bush's selection of Dan Quayle, who as Vice
President still comes across to many people as a lightweight. Other
debatable appointments were those of Boyden Gray, the ethics chief
with ethical problems of his own, and chief of staff John Sununu,
an abrasive former New Hampshire Governor untrained in the ways of
Washington. Sununu was insisting "we've got the votes" to confirm
Tower over the powerful Nunn's opposition, a boast echoed by other
White House officials only a day before the committee vote. Bush's
political judgment was no better. It was the President who
proclaimed last Tuesday that an FBI report had "gunned down" the
allegations of heavy drinking and womanizing by Tower.

    Bush's widely touted "honeymoon" with Congress, already
endangered by his vagueness  on the budget, was ending sooner than
that of any new President in recent memory.  Though the President
cannot get anything done without the cooperation of at least some
members of the Democratic congressional majorities, the task of
wooing them will now be harder. Within the Administration, the
absence of a Secretary of Defense able to assert the Pentagon's
view will prolong the review of foreign and national-security
problems that Bush insists on completing before he makes major
international-policy moves.

    The Administration's lack of momentum is already causing it to
fall behind events in several regions. Soviet Foreign Minister
Eduard Shevardnadze's trip to the Middle East last week was part
of a skillful diplomatic campaign aimed at giving Moscow a major
voice in the region. In Panama, General Fred Woerner, commander of
the U.S. Southern Command, issued an uncharacteristically public
complaint that Washington has no real policy toward that country.
In Asia, the focus of Bush's efforts last week, China and Viet Nam
are negotiating a settlement in Kampuchea with almost no input from
Washington. In Western Europe, allies beguiled by Mikhail
Gorbachev's promise to reduce Soviet conventional forces wonder how
far to modernize their own military power, and the U.S. has been
unable to give them much guidance.

    The appearance of sluggishness overseas was compounded at home
when the Federal Reserve Bank raised the discount rate a half
point, to 7%. The move was a clear sign that the Fed, frightened
by recent indicators, does not believe the new Administration's
rosy assertion that inflation can be held in check without higher
interest rates.

    Under different circumstances, Bush's Asian trip might have
been the start of a more vigorous diplomacy. As it was, the
President appeared likely to accomplish no more than he did at the
innumerable foreign funerals he attended as Vice President. During
only two days in Japan, Bush scheduled 19 meetings with Kings,
Presidents and Prime Ministers of countries ranging from France to
Saudi Arabia to Singapore. But since he was unprepared to get into
matters of substance, many of the meetings lasted only 15 to 25
minutes, including opening pleasantries and time for translation.
In a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, Bush
refrained from discussing in detail such key topics as trade and
sharing the defense burden. In China, where Bush stopped Saturday
and Sunday, his visit mostly renewed friendships dating back to his
residence there as U.S. envoy in the mid-1970s. The entire basis
of the relationship between the U.S. and China, which was founded
on mutual distrust of the Soviet Union, is changing as Gorbachev
prepares to visit Beijing in May for a summit with Deng Xiaoping.
Yet there was no indication that Bush spelled out American
rethinking of where the relationship goes from here. Nor was he
prepared to touch on any ticklish trade and security issues in a
six-hour visit to South Korea on Monday before winging home.

    Asked about these problems, the White House invariably replies
blandly that they are "under review." Supposedly, the
Administration is formally reconsidering some 30 issues, including
general policy toward whole regions (the Middle East, Central
America) and such narrow questions as whether the U.S. should help
Japan build its own fighter plane rather than buy an American
design. But the reviews are going slowly, and the absence of a
Pentagon chief to give military input could stretch them out for
additional weeks or even months. Meanwhile, the rush of events may
not wait. Said a State Department official: "We are going to pay
a big price for sticking with Tower."

    The price may not be confined to the Department of Defense.
Senior White House officials began to speculate about whether chief
of staff Sununu can survive in his post. Coming from a state
dominated by Republicans, Sununu has failed to appreciate that in
Washington it is necessary to deal with Democrats too. In the Tower
case, he underrated the power of Sam Nunn, the owlish Democrat who
has established such a reputation for disinterested expertise on
military policy that he can take nearly all of his party with him
on any vote on defense matters. Sununu compounded the trouble by
turning over most of the pro-Tower campaigning to aides led by
Frederick McClure, who landed the job of White House congressional
liaison only after two other candidates declined to work for
Sununu. McClure is a former Tower aide who proved curiously unaware
of the Senate's real opinion of his former boss.

    After the vote, the White House went on a binge of
finger-pointing. Some Bush aides blamed the stunning defeat on
ex-Tower aides who, they said, had been lobbying ineptly on Capitol
Hill without proper supervision. The Tower men scoffed back that
they had been watched closely all the way by Sununu. Said one:
"Sununu has been in on all the major decisions." But all sides
agreed on the real villain: Sam Nunn. Several accused the chairman
of deciding secretly two weeks ago that Tower had to go and then
browbeating his Democratic colleagues into a party-line vote. But
that claim underplayed the qualms of some Republican Senators. John
Warner, the ranking G.O.P. member on the committee, decided in the
end to support Tower for two reasons: Bush wanted him for the job,
and Warner wanted to secure his own political future.

    Longer range, Bush is running a risk of subtly and
unintentionally undermining his Administration. A primal
commandment for new Presidents, particularly those faced with a
Congress controlled by the opposition party: Thou shalt avoid early
defeats. The opening days are the time when Congress and the public
-- and foreign leaders -- are sizing up the new man. The
perceptions they form early are likely to color their view of the
President throughout his term.

    Though Tower himself and Sununu helped engineer this debacle,
Bush is also to blame. His insecurities and a stubborn streak make
him leery of admitting outsiders, especially people who have
independent followings, into his inner circle. Most new Presidents
display this flaw to some extent, but Bush has it worse than, say,
Ronald Reagan, who eight years ago put together an effective team
that mixed old friends and talented people he barely knew, some
staunchly conservative, others not. In contrast, says a former Bush
adviser who played a large role in the transition, Bush "always
asked, `Is he or she really on the team?'" In selecting Quayle,
for example, Bush did not want a running mate with a significant
constituency of his own, and he made the decision without heeding
the counsel of politically savvy advisers. Sununu too was a highly
personal choice: he had little Washington experience, but Bush had
come to rely on him heavily during the 1988 primaries and in
formulating the Republican platform.

    Tower is a friend of much longer standing. The Texan's 1961
success in becoming the first G.O.P. Senator from the Lone Star
State since Reconstruction helped inspire Bush, then an oil
executive, to think that a Republican could win a statewide race.
(That feat eluded Bush, who sandwiched two terms in the House
between two losing bids for the Senate.) Tower was one of the first
senior Republicans to declare for Bush in 1988, and he campaigned
tirelessly for the Vice President. In short, he passed the loyalty
test, which Bush regards as all important, with top marks, and he
wanted the job of Secretary of Defense at a time when no other Bush
intimate did.

    Oddly enough, Bush seemed unconcerned about stories of Tower's
boozing and wenching, though he must have heard them; anyone who
knew his way around Washington in the past 20 years could hardly
avoid them. What did worry the President was Tower's free-spending
reign as Armed Services chairman, when he played a key role in
Reagan's $2.2 trillion military buildup. Could a man with that
record carry out the brutal crackdown on military spending that
budget deficits make inevitable? Tower's opponents within the Bush
transition team spread stories that it was looking for a strong
administrator to be No. 2 man at the Pentagon and that such a
person would be nominated along with Tower as a team. That
immediately downgraded Tower. After all, the other Cabinet nominees
had been chosen individually.

    The search for a No. 2 held up Tower's nomination for weeks.
So did the requisite FBI check. The agency concluded that the many
tales about Tower's affairs with women, even if true, posed no
threat to national security. Drinking was something else: FBI
agents asked more than 100 people if they had seen Tower drinking,
what he was drinking, how much he was drinking, and so on. By the
time Tower's long-delayed nomination was announced, just before
Christmas, his sex life and drinking habits were already being
publicly debated.

    Still, the White House foresaw no trouble. Bush and his aides
counted on Tower's status as a senior member of the Senate, earned
during four terms, to smother all doubts among the other club
members. But they made two salient mistakes: 1) they failed to
appreciate that Tower's four-year chairmanship of the Armed
Services Committee was not entirely an asset, that his dictatorial
manner had alienated some  members; 2) they greatly underestimated
the power of Chairman Nunn.

    At first the nomination appeared to be sailing through. But in
early February renewed stories about Tower's drinking and
womanizing became so prevalent that the committee demanded a new
FBI check. Another problem, a serious one, developed during the
hearings: major defense contractors paid Tower $750,000 during 2
1/2 years in which he was out of office, and Tower's explanations
of what he did to earn that money were vague and unsatisfactory.
Even apart from questions of conflict of interest, Tower's actions
tweaked congressional sensitivity over the "revolving door" through
which defense contractors and Pentagon officials move easily,
fostering an unhealthy coziness that distorts what should be
arm's-length relationships.

    In the end, it was not any one factor that brought Tower down
in the committee but a combination of four: allegations of
drinking, stories about womanizing, doubts about his relations with
defense contractors, and resentment of his high-handed running of
the committee. Democrats chose to single out  the alcohol problem
in speeches explaining their no votes Thursday night. Tower
admitted to the committee  that he drank excessively in the 1970s,
but said he now has no more than a glass or two of wine a day. Yet
he never sought help to overcome the problem, a lapse that bothered
Nunn in particular. Moreover, stories of heavy imbibing much later
than the 1970s were coming to light even last week. The Houston
Post reported that four people questioned by the FBI said they had
seen Tower drunk and prancing with young women at a Dallas
nightclub last July. A Senator might brush off any or even all of
the stories as impossible to pin down; John Warner of Virginia,
ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, dismissed them
as a "cobweb of fact, fiction and fantasy." But to the Democrats
the sheer number of such stories, whatever their individual
veracity, was unhappily impressive. It seems likely that some of
Tower's Senate colleagues have seen him drunk, though none would
ever admit it publicly for fear of being on the receiving end of
a similar accusation. It is noteworthy that Republican Senators
who defended Tower last week would not say flatly they had never
seen him drunk; they asserted instead that they had never seen him
"unable to function," or some similar locution.

    Were the censorious Democrats being hypocritical? They were
certainly holding Tower to a higher standard than they would apply
to other Government officers -- or to themselves. Yet those
standards have gradually been rising even for lesser offices. Quite
aside from the erotic misadventures of Gary Hart, once powerful
Congressmen Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays helped bring themselves
down in the 1970s through drinking and sexual behavior that would
have been winked at in any earlier decade.

    More important, for a handful of posts such as Secretary of
State or Defense, CIA director and National Security Adviser (and,
of course, President), a higher standard is legitimate. A Secretary
of Education or Labor, or for that matter a Senator or Congressman,
who overindulges is unlikely to damage the nation if a sudden
crisis breaks. A Secretary of Defense or CIA director who lacks a
clear mind, steady nerves and cool judgment could cause a disaster.
As Nunn said just before the Armed Services Committee vote Thursday
night, "I cannot in good conscience vote to put an individual at
the top of the chain of command when his history of excessive
drinking is such that he would not be selected to command a missile
wing, a SAC (Strategic Air Command) bomber squadron or a Trident
missile submarine."

    Bush, at least initially, refused to admit defeat  on Tower
and stubbornly insisted that his nomination be debated before the
full Senate. On the morning after the committee turned thumbs down
on him, Tower reported to work at his temporary office at the
Pentagon. In a meeting convened in Tokyo shortly before the
committee vote, Bush forbade his aides even to speculate on
possible successors to the Pentagon job. If any violators of that
rule could be identified, the President declared, "I would like to
kick some serious hide."  Though a barrage of calls on Tower's
behalf from Quayle in the White House failed to swing the committee
vote, the President planned to re-enter the fight as soon as he
returned from Asia and to meet with as many as ten Democrats who
might succumb to personal wooing.

    The odds are poor. To begin with, the White House would have
to retain all 45 Republican votes. It might do so, but with
difficulty; at least some Republicans are likely to be torn between
party loyalty and their dislike of Tower. Then, presuming all 100
Senators voted, Bush would have to win over at least five Democrats
to produce a 50-50 tie, which Vice President Quayle could break in
Tower's favor. That also looks like a long shot. Aides at week's
end could produce the names of only three or four Democratic
Senators susceptible to conversion. Besides Tower's fellow Texan
Lloyd Bentsen and Charles Robb of Virginia, the list included such
unlikely possibilities as Massachusetts' Edward Kennedy and
Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. White House aides point out that
Tower cast one of five votes against the censure of Dodd's father
Thomas, who was charged with misuse of campaign funds when the two
men served in the Senate during the 1960s. They suggest that
Kennedy might be brought around because he too has been victimized
by rumors and innuendo, much of it spread by Republicans. But if
anyone can bring every last Democratic Senator along, it is Sam
Nunn. Before the Armed Services Committee vote, he persuaded
Richard Shelby of Alabama, one of the most conservative Democratic
Senators, to join his more liberal colleagues in rejecting Tower.
The nominee, said Shelby, had already been "irreparably damaged"
by the suspicions aroused by the hearings.

    Considering how Tower has been weakened, it was difficult to
see why he was stubbornly clinging to his diminishing hopes of
getting the job. Some prominent Republicans at week's end were
urging him to spare Bush further embarrassment. "Even if he wins,
what has he won?" they asked. It was a difficult question to
answer, far more difficult than the question of what Bush stands
to lose: not just a Secretary of Defense, but the all-important
impression that he is in command of a government with sound
judgment, creative ideas and lots of momentum.