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Days of whine and poses; John Tower's lament - and what it misses
Washington Monthly, March, 1991 by Steven Waldman
Steven Waldman is a Washington correspondent for Newsweek and a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly.
* Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir. John G. Tower. Little, Brown, $22.95.
John Tower's lament--and and what it misses
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John Tower still seems a little bitter. The media that covered his confirmation is described in his memoirs as a "lynch mob ... waiting beside a rickety wooden tumbrel to take me off to the guillotine." Other accusers were "old political enemies ... publicity seekers, crackpots, and busybodies." And Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee? Let's just say Tower shouldn't sit next to Nunn at the next Military-Industrial Complex Christmas party. Nunn is the man who "was piling up the kindling at my feet" before Tower was "burned at the stake." Tower can barely go a page without hissing at Nunn, using that same tone of voice the Wicked Witch of the West used as she was melting. Nunn was "blinded by ambition"; a coward who becomes "frightened" in political battle; a war-wimp whose military service "was limited to six months of active duty in the Coast Guard, teaching swimming and physical training"; and even a sourpuss. "There is no place for levity in Sam Nunn's office," writes Tower, not known himself as Senator Laugh-a-minute.
If you come to this book* having only a vague memory of Tower as that nasty little man with black-lacquered hair, you will leave with a clearer impression of his nastiness. John Tower is not easy to like, and his memoirs are filled with ugly bursts of hypocrisy. For example, he spends much time criticizing the media for basing stories on unsubstantiated rumors about his drinking-and then attacks James Exon for having "a reputation" as one of the most excessive regular boozers in the Senate."
It hurts, therefore, to admit that as Tower angrily flails at various targets, he scores some impressive direct hits, particularly against the media and a few of his fellow senators. The Tower nomination battle combined elements of several previous media controversies, including intoxicants (a la Judge Douglas Ginsburg); women (Gary Hart); the revolving door (Michael Deaver); and a politicized confirmation process (poor Robert Bork). Tower's book, an attempt at personal vindication and score-settling, is not exactly a dispassionate analysis of the shifting standards of ethics. But he makes some incisive points and provides a good vehicle for figuring out when the character cops busted down the door without a warrant and when they were being fair.
At the time of the nomination flap, critics of the media's "new morality" often decried the obsessive focus on "womanizing and drinking." But these two evils shouldn't be spoken of in the same breath. They are not remotely comparable in seriousness. "Womanizing" may or may not be a character issue that reflects upon treatment of other human beings. Drinking, on the other hand, is not a fuzzy character issue, but a fitness issue, much in the same way a candidate's stupidity might be. The frantic senatorial and media crusade to discover Tower's drinking history was entirely proper.
Still, the crusaders had to answer a difficult question: what kind of proof about drinking does one need? Tower's nomination was going well until Paul Weyrich, the right-wing activist, told the committee he had personally witnessed Tower in an unfortunate "condition-lacking sobriety." But the puritanical Weyrich wasn't deemed a reliable judge of such things. Nunn and Senator John Warner, the ranking Republican on the committee, began really paying attention to the drinking issue when Congressman Larry Combest, a former Tower staff aide, described his old boss's habits in the sixties and seventies. In the words of The Washington Post, Combest told the senators that Tower "consumed a bottle of scotch a night several times a week and ... had to be helped out of his detachable shirt collars into bed." Tower disputes many of the particular incidents that various accusers mentioned, but does concede that he drank "too much" in the early seventies and later cut back.
For his defense, Tower and his allies adopted what could be called the Lampshade Standard. A public official's drinking habits are not relevant unless they noticeably affect his job performance in some blatant way-e.g., causing him to don a lampshade during a Senate debate on arms control. "He did his job; never showed up drunk on the Senate floor," one conservative told a Tower associate. Combest, realizing he had inadvertently hurt his friend, sought to clarify the issue by saying that he was "unaware of any instance when Senator Tower's judgment or ability to render reasonable and cogent decisions on matters of import was impaired owing to alcohol abuse or dependency." In other words, no drunkenness when it really mattered.
The problem with the job performance standard is that if Tower was an alcoholic he could have been stone sober during office hours and still had his judgment and temperament somewhat impaired by liquor. That's the nature of alcoholism. Chemical dependency on alcohol changes the functioning of the brain continuously, not just when a person is drunk. And just what exactly are the office hours at Defense during a war, anyway?
