TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022089/02208900.049

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.3 KB | 148 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 30

Friendship Has Limits


Partisan conflicts on the budget and John Tower's stalled
nomination signal trouble for the President's era of good
feelings

By Margaret Carlson


    Honeymoons have a way of ending abruptly. One day it's
roses and heart-shaped beds; the next, it's dishes to be done
and garbage taken out. George Bush last week had to face up to
the messy chores of governing and give up his notion that
making nice with the Democrats could work forever.

    Since his Inauguration, Bush has been trying to keep intact
the tacit gentlemen's agreement forged by his fuzzy call for an
era of bipartisanship and high ethical standards: if everyone in
power would just get along with everyone else in power, all
would be well. A 51% federal salary increase would quietly take
effect, the Cabinet could be swiftly and pleasantly confirmed,
sleaze would disappear in a warm glow of mutual trust. If
everyone would make the same rosy economic assumptions, money
would be found to pay for the savings and loan cleanup just
unveiled and the budget just proposed.

    Alas, Washington has gone all partisan on the President.
The new mood stems not just from Congressmen's crankiness over
fumbling their pay raise. Capitol Hill does not want to take
the rap for the irreconcilable differences between what Bush is
promising in his budget and what the Treasury will allow him to
do. Nor is the Senate Armed Services Committee going to
rubber-stamp the nomination of former Senator John Tower as
Secretary of Defense.

    Last week Bush also got a whiff of trouble in what he
promised would be a squeaky clean Administration. It came from
none other than his chief ethics officer, C. Boyden Gray, the
man responsible for vetting the nomination of John Tower and
advising others in the Administration that they must give up
outside income and jobs: Secretary of State James Baker, for
one, would have to resolve the potential conflict posed by his
holdings in Chemical New York Corp., a bank that holds a
significant amount of Third World debt.

    But Gray had an ethical problem of his own. Newspaper
reports disclosed that during Bush's eight years as Vice
President, Gray made as much as $50,000 a year as chairman and
a director of his family's $500 million communications company,
while collecting his pay as Bush's counsel. Bush did not fire
Gray, or even hold his nose. The President defended the legality
and benign intent of his aide, showing the same kind of myopia
toward one of his own that got Ronald Reagan in trouble. By
midweek, however, Gray had resigned from the corporation and put
his assets in a blind trust.

    Bush has an even bigger problem getting John Tower
confirmed as Defense Secretary. Initially, it looked as if the
Armed Services Committee would ultimately observe protocol: the
President's nominee does not have to be someone the committee
members would choose, just someone they can stomach. "Ironbutt,"
as Tower was known in the Senate for his imperious ways and
wait-'em-out negotiating style, would never win a popularity
contest. Nevertheless, the hearings started out as a love fest,
with the former chair of the committee receiving a round of
applause at the end of his first day of testimony.

    Club rules required that the messy downside of the
selection be glossed over. Sure, the twice-divorced Tower liked
to take a drink and was frequently in the company of women not
his wife, but that was his business. More disturbing was the
fact that he collected $750,000 in consulting fees from defense
contractors in the two years after he returned from serving as
the Reagan Administration's chief strategic arms negotiator
during START talks in Geneva. (The money was for "enlightened
speculation," testified Tower, not inside information.)
Senators who may harbor the hope of someday taking a twirl
through the revolving door seemed inclined to swallow that one
as well.

    Yet every time it looked as if the nomination would come to a
vote, another sensational allegation surfaced. When the
committee heard that one of Tower's alleged affairs was an
encounter with an East German woman in Geneva, the security
risk was too much to ignore. Last Tuesday the FBI was also
called back to investigate allegations that Unisys Corp. had
made a campaign contribution in exchange for a meeting with
Tower when he was a Senator.

    Up to this point, Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, who will
carry most Democrats with him, had not uttered a partisan word.
Cautious and conservative, the Georgia Senator had kept his
distance from the messy personal business. He had passed
lightly over the conflict-of-interest questions and was expected
to vote for confirmation. Then the White House blundered by
giving committee Republicans a peek at what the FBI had come up
with; Nunn was excluded. Annoyed, he announced that if he had
to vote that day, he would vote against Tower.

    The allegations of heavy drinking were particularly
troubling, Nunn said, since Tower would be "in the chain of
command that has control over the arsenal of the United States.
The Secretary of Defense has to, in my view, have clarity of
thought at all times. There's no such thing as an eight-hour
day in that job."

    Suddenly Tower seemed doomed. New names began to float
through Washington: Elliot Richardson, Donald Rumsfeld, James
Schlesinger. Bush intervened, inviting Nunn to the White House
for a briefing. Reporters were summoned to the Oval Office,
where Bush carried the damage control a step further by
insisting, "I have seen nothing, not one substantive fact, that
makes me change my mind about John Tower's ability . . ." To
emphasize the point, Tower was seated next to the President at
a Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

    This revived the gasping Tower nomination for the moment.
But with Congress in recess until next week, there is plenty of
time for new charges to leak out -- and for the snicker factor
to grow. Tower's reputation as a ladies' man, which he took no
trouble to hide, has become more laughable than scandalous.
Even now, he flaunts his latest companion, who sat blond and
bored behind him each day as he testified. Whether out of
ignorance or arrogance, Tower made headlines when he jokingly
threatened to fondle her at lunch in a hotel restaurant during
a recess in the hearings. "Not here, John," she protested.

     In Washington titans fall not from a single blow but from a
thousand small cuts. Few believe Tower could survive a "no" from
Nunn. Even if the Bush Administration prevailed in a
confirmation fight, Nunn could make life so miserable that
Tower might wish he were back speculating in an enlightened way
for the LTV company. But Nunn has been careful to leave himself
the option of voting yes.

     Why has George Bush, who began his presidency by
emphasizing high standards, found himself so quickly saddled
with so many embarrassments? Part of the answer is that, ethics
aside, friendship and political alliances go a long way with
Bush -- and with the rest of Washington. If Tower does not show
up in public drunk, with an Iranian arms merchant on one arm
and a female KGB officer on the other, he may make it yet.

    -- Michael Duffy and Bruce van Voorst/Washington.