Historic Quote: “I’d rather run the Pentagon from up here.” Longtime House Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Vinson (D-Georgia) on the possibility of becoming Defense Secretary.”
As hard as it is to believe, next year will mark a quarter of a century since the nomination of John Tower’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense. The rejection came along fairly partisan lines that focused on, among other things, allegations of his drinking and womanizing during his nearly a quarter of a century as a United States Senator from Texas.
But Tower has a firm place in history even before the nomination. When Lyndon Baines Johnson became vice-president, it was Tower, a 35 year old Republican, who won the special election to succeed him. That made Tower, along with George H.W. Bush, among the Founding Father’s of the modern Republican Party in Texas, though of course Bush lost his Senate races twice.
The seed for Tower’s win in the special was planted in November of 1960, when the Witchita Falls political science professor had taken 41% against LBJ. At the state level, most Democrats (and Republicans for that matter) would have considered that a ceiling in a state that had a Congressional delegation that was almost unanimously Democratic in every stripe. Some were liberals, some conservative, and others in between, but all were Democrats.
Now there is evidence that some voters opposed LBJ because they begrudged him for continuing to seek re-election to the Senate as he was running for Vice-President (his ability to do so would famously be called the “LBJ law). But the fact that Tower was able to do so well against LBJ is the time I believe the south began signaling it’s change, however small, against the Democratic reign in the south that is now beyond complete. Kennedy being helped over the finish line by Johnson in Texas was all the more evidence that this was the case.
Tower with his family after his first elecion to the Senate. He writes the affinity folks had for his young family was a major asset to his narrow win.
When LBJ resigned, Governor Price Daniel appointed Congressman William Blakely, a “Tory Democrat” to fill the seat.
Tower immediately began campaigning though, few expected him to perform much better than the past November, much less win. Sam Rayburn called him a “pipsqueak.”
The field of candidates vying for the seat was colorful and long. 71 in all. But only a handful were serious. One of them was Jim Wright, still an obscure Congressman from Fort Worth. Another was Henry Gonzalas, who that spring would capture his San Antonio Congressional seat.
Blakely emerged from the primary in second place. Tower actually placed first but, as the lone serious Republican candidate, only had 31% and he was still not seen as the person to beat.
Press Photo, Tower with Mansfield and Church
Blakely was a conservative Democrat who not only had backed Eisenhower in both of his campaigns, but challenged Ralph Yarborough, then a sitting Senator, in the 1958 Democratic primary. Though he didn’t come close to toppling him, Yarborough wouldn’t do a thing to help his former nemesis. In fact, he would remark that both candidates seemed to be engaged “in a competition as to determine who could denounce the Kennedy administration the hardest.”
Meanwhile, Tower received help from Barry Goldwater and Prescott Bush, which formulated his life long friendship with the future President. Tower won by 11,000 votes. He was 5’5 but would forever earn the nickname the “little giant.”
As President of the Senate, Johnson would swear him in and as Tower recounts in his autobiography, Consequences, he stepped down from the Senate rostrum and “stood on the lower step. LBJ, (6’4),who loomed over me when we were both on equal footing, remained on the top step, forcing me to crane my neck back to look him in the eye.” But Tower would write, “it didn’t bother me a bit.”
John Tower (Washington Post photo)
Tower’s voting record was solidly conservative, opposing Civil Rights legislation and the “Great Society.” But he was a staunch advocate of more military spending and favored the war in Vietnam, which caused so many divisions among Democrats that, near the end of his Presidency, LBJ invited him for a drink at the White House, and told him, “John, I get more loyalty from you that my own party.” Around that time, Tower was instrumental in urging Nixon to pick Spiro Agnew, the unknown Governor of Maryland, as his running mate.
At first, Tower was not a workhorse. But as he gained seniority and proved his durability by continuing to win re-election, that changed, leading the Almanac of American Politics to conclude that “he does not use his charm to ingratiate himself to others but he does have influence by virtue of his hard work and brain power.”
Tower served on the Intelligence Committee where he he would work surprisingly well with the panel’s Democratic Chairman, Frank Church. But when Tower became chairman of the Armed Services Committee after the Republicans took the Senate in 1980, he hired a partisan staff.
Tower against early odds, won re-election fairly easily in 1966 when the Democrats again put up a Torycrat, and a number crossed party lines to back Tower. In 1972, he beat Harold “Barefoot” Sanders 55-44%. Sanders was accepted by liberals and conservatives alike, but Tower received substantial aid from Nixon’s massive win.
1978 would prove tougher. His opponent would be two-term Congressman Bob Krueger, whose base was in Bexar County (San Antonio), but also some of the adjacent GOP counties. He gained a following among usually GOP friendly oil and gas industries as the main proponent of a deregulation bill that failed. But Krueger, an attorney, was unlike any opponent Tower had previously faced. He was erudite, often quoting Shakespeare. But he wouldn’t hesitate to go for the jugular.
Krueger had often told audiences that Tower was a “womanizer” and attacked him for not releasing the financial records of his ex-wife Lou, who was still prominent on his campaign. Tower backers intimated Krueger was a homosexual and Krueger knew little about marriage, and knows nothing about the sensitivity involved in a marriage between two people with children from previous marriages and longstanding career.” “When a woman marries a man, she doesn’t give up her privacy even if she marries a U.S. Senator.”
The most high profile point came when Krueger approached Tower during a luncheon in mid-October to shake hands. Tower pointedly turned away. Some newspapers criticized him and Tower, who had been tied in the polls at that point, dropped slightly. But he then undertook a serious offensive. He taped an ad in which he said “I was brought up to believe that a handshake was and is a symbol of friendship and respect. I was not brought up to believe that a handshake is a meaningless and hypocritical act done for public display.”
The Almanac of American Politics observed that “for once, the Senator’s sour personality seemed to have worked to his benefit.” Meanwhile, Tower called Krueger a man of “inherited wealth” and campaigned campaigned in Hispanic areas, which Tower credited with helping him. The race was decided by just 12,000 votes. But it was enough to give him a 4th term and, his last. He would not stand for re-election in ’84.
Some conservatives may have resisted Tower due to his support of Ford over Reagan in ’76. Tower believed that he had a duty to back Ford as the incumbent President. But Reagan beat Ford in Texas and controlled the delegate selection. It was something that would haunt him for the remainder of his Senate career. Tower recalls in his memoirs suggesting the name of a friend for an Ambassadorship only to be told that he had backed Ford. Tower replied that he had done so as well, for which the secretary replied, “we’re well aware of that, Senator.”
After his term, Tower stayed on the national stage, chairing a number of committees, The most high profile was the Iran Contra investigation.
When Bush won the Presidency, Tower was only a natural for the position of Defense Secretary. The Tower battle. As he wrote in his memoirs, one Senator, Democrat Alan Dixon of Illinois, had even told Tower he didn’t even have to bother making the customary courtesy call to his office. But his drinking was well known and Democrats, whether genuine or out to tar the new President, expressed concern. The Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Sam Nunn, vowed to conduct hearings into that.
The hearings went on five weeks and culminated with Tower pledging to abstain from alcohol or resign. Democrats were still not convinced. Nunn said, “I cannot in good conscience vote to put a man 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 bomber squadron, or a Trident missile submarine.” The Armed Services Committee took a roll and moved the nomination to the Senate floor unfavorably.
The ambivalence about Tower was by no means limited to Democrats. John Warner, the ranking Republican on Armed Services, expressed skepticism. So did Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Larry Pressler of South Dakota. Warner had gone so far as to stun all in the room at one hearing by challenging backers to “tell me why I should vote for this man.” McCain replied, “tell me why you shouldn’t vote for this man.”
Goldwater again came to Tower’s defense saying, “we wouldn’t have a government.” That ultimately was Tower’s defense as well. In the end, all of the wayward Republicans came home, with the exception of Kansan Nancy Kassebaum. But she reportedly had said she would have voted “aye” had her vote made the difference.
Three Democrats backed Tower. Howell Heflin of Alabama implored his colleagues to “give him a chance.” His longtime Texas colleague Lloyd Bentsen backed him, as did Chris Dodd, perhaps remembering that he voted against censuring his own father, Had Dodd’s vote made the difference, it’s hard to know what he would have done. The vote was 53-47.
After the vote, Tower said he “will be recorded as the first Cabinet nominee in the history of the Republic to be rejected in the first 90 days of a Presidency and perhaps be harshly judged. But I depart from this place at peace with myself, knowing that I have given a full measure of devotion to my country. No public figure in my memory has been subjected to such a far-reaching and thorough investigation, nor had his human foibles bared to such intensive and demeaning public scrutiny.”
Tower’s rejection also presented us with one of those classic, “what-if’s.” If Tower had been confirmed, he may have served the full four years George H.W. Bush was in office. Had he done so, Dick Cheney, whose pick for Defense after Tower was rejected allowed him to preside over many briefings during the Persian Gulf War, may never have been vice-president. And Dick Cheney — at least for the moment, would have remained in the House, thereby preventing, at least temporarily, Gingrich’s rise to Minority Whip and eventually, the Speakership.
Tower returned In April 1991, he boarded a plane a long with 20 other people, including his daughter, which crashed at it prepared for landing in Brunswick, Georgia. He and every other passenger on board were killed. The crash occurred only one day after Republican Senator John Heinz died in another private air crash. Bush called it a “sad day.”