Days of whine and poses; John Tower's lament - and what it misses

Washington Monthly, March, 1991 by Steven Waldman

With good reason, Tower complains bitterly about the chain reaction that turns rumor into legitimate news. Time after time, someone made a charge, the FBI investigated it, and then the fact that the FBI was looking into it gave the charge credence-even if it was found to be untrue. Consider this report in the Los Angeles Times: "Tower, according to unsubstantiated stories, is a womanizer and has a drinking problem. The tales were inspired by Tower's recent divorce. One particularly wild-and wholly unfounded-story has Tower barred from Australia because of a drunken spree there." And L.A. Times editor Shelby Coffey's mother wears army boots, a wholly unreliable source once told me.

Having said all that, I must add: Boy, am I glad John Tower isn't defense secretary. Not because of "womanizing." And not primarily because of his drinking, which was troubling, but ultimately not conclusive enough to reject any nominee who was otherwise outstanding. The problem was that Tower was not otherwise outstanding-because of his relationship with the defense industry and his stewardship of the Senate Armed Services Committee during the Reagan defense build-up. There was no solid proof Tower did anything illegal when he was a defense consultant after leaving government, but his closeness to the industry makes it doubtful he would have been sufficiently critical of contractors' products and claims.

Looking back through the press coverage of the confirmation battle, it is staggering how little attention was given to Tower's role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee from 1981 to 1985, as the Pentagon and Congress squandered a trillion dollars. Here, the public was ill served by the media's predilection toward certain types of critical reporting and its avoidance of others. It vigorously pursues "character" issues-sometimes legitimate, sometimes not-because they're fun to write and read about. The press is also good at tracking down corruption because it involves the breaking of predefined rules. Since the rules were written by other people, the media doesn't have to judge their appropriateness, just whether they were violated. But when it comes to policy dereliction-remember the S&L crisis?-the press finds itself unequipped (who am I to say if a billion dollars should have been spent on that weapons system?), uninterested (covering policy means studying minutiae), or unwilling (no one ever won a Pulitzer for analyzing how a piece of legislation got screwed up).

Tower says he was a military reformer all along. I'm no defense expert, but one statement from his book casts serious doubt on his bona fides: "Waste, fraud, and abuse [in the Pentagon] wouldn't have amounted to even a billion dollars. . . . The money was spent well." Does he honestly believe that the Pentagon has wasted only .05 percent of its budget? The B-1 bomber alone is a waste of $20 billion. Unwise and consent

Tower feels that an irrational, runaway process chewed him up, ignoring his defense expertise and past service to his country. What's more, "the rules of ethical conduct are constantly shifting with little or no warning"-and he ticks off the names of senators who drank a lot more than he did, believe you me.