Word: toweritis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...John Tower too went through, not long ago, the humiliation of having his private life made public. Yet that was because Tower, like Gary Hart and Dan Quayle before him, was in line for a position in which discretion is imperative; the Secretary of Defense's self-control is a matter of national welfare. All that is at stake in the Boggs case is dreams. We do not care whether our car mechanic, say, is a philanderer, so long as he does the job that he is paid to do; so too with our athletes. We pay our baseball players...
...then, does the exposure of Boggs, though so much less important, feel so much more plangent than the rejection of Tower? Perhaps because we place more faith in our athletic superstars, and expect more faithfulness in return. Heroism is famously a game of inches: get a little too close to a role model, catch him at the backstage entrance, and the loss can be desolating. Admiration is itself a form of suspended disbelief; turning a blind eye can be as much an act of forgiveness as turning the other cheek. We cannot afford to see our heroes at too close...
...North's Iran-contra trial goes beyond whether Ronald Reagan was aware of the secret policy his subordinates carried out in his name. Put bluntly, the new question is, Did the former President not only approve of the policy but lie about it in 1987 when he told the Tower commission that he did not know of the National Security Council's assistance to the rebels...
According to the report of the three-man board (John Tower, Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft), which interviewed Reagan twice, the President insisted "he did not know that the NSC staff was engaged in helping the contras" from 1984 to 1986, when Congress banned U.S. military assistance to the rebels. But North, a former NSC aide charged with lying to Congress about his efforts to keep the contras intact, hopes to persuade a jury in Washington that Reagan and other superiors fully approved his activities...
...possible that what the Tower commission dryly termed Reagan's "management style" permitted subordinates to convey his approval of plans of which he was unaware. Or by 1987 Reagan may have forgotten acts taken to help the contras in 1985, even though his fight with Congress over the issue had been a searing one. As the North trial focuses increasingly on Reagan's role in the scandal, it seems likely the ex-President will be called to testify. If Reagan breaks historical precedent by doing so, the clash between his past public statements and Oliver North's basic defense could...