Word: sununu
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Instead, the strategy had shifted to a plan sketched out by White House chief of staff John Sununu and Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole within hours of Tower's narrow rejection by the Senate Armed Services Committee: since the will-o'-the-wisp of bipartisanship was likely to evaporate anyway, a fight to the finish could provide the President with an opportunity to charge that it was the Democrats who spoiled the atmosphere first. "It's been so embarrassing already, what's a vote on the Senate floor?" said one operative working on Tower's behalf. "Besides, this...
...leader of the fight for Tower, Dole appears to relish the opportunity to rescue Bush, who buried him in last year's New Hampshire presidential primary, and Sununu, who helped engineer the Bush victory in his state. "Dole was instrumental" in plotting the Tower strategy, said a senior Administration official. "He was the architect, and Sununu carried it out." Dole is known to be skeptical of the skills the White House brings to a battle. (With good reason: Bush's aides confessed last week that they did not even know in advance of Tower's pledge to swear off drinking...
...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...
...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...
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...