Word: toweritis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...odds are poor. To begin with, the White House would have to retain all 45 Republican votes. It might do so, but with difficulty; at least some Republicans are likely to be torn between party loyalty and their dislike of Tower. Then, presuming all 100 Senators voted, Bush would have to win over at least five Democrats to produce a 50-50 tie, which Vice President Quayle could break in Tower's favor. That also looks like a long shot. Aides at week's end could produce the names of only three or four Democratic Senators susceptible to conversion. Besides...
Considering how Tower has been weakened, it was difficult to see why he was stubbornly clinging to his diminishing hopes of getting the job. Some prominent Republicans at week's end were urging him to spare Bush further embarrassment. "Even if he wins, what has he won?" they asked. It was a difficult question to answer, far more difficult than the question of what Bush stands to lose: not just a Secretary of Defense, but the all-important impression that he is in command of a government with sound judgment, creative ideas and lots of momentum...
Stories like John Tower's come along with uncomfortable regularity on Capitol Hill. Hays Gorey knows that. TIME's chief congressional correspondent can't stay away from the beat he first covered more than 20 years ago. Back then, Gorey watched the Senate agonize over passing judgment on another of its own: in the dock in 1967 was Connecticut's Thomas Dodd, eventually censured for a misuse of campaign funds. Now happily back on the Hill after a two- decade hiatus reporting on national politics, Gorey finds Congress is still just as loath to bring down a colleague...
Last Thursday evening Gorey watched it happen again. A Senate aide told him that the Senate Armed Services Committee was about to hold its momentous vote on whether John Tower, the former G.O.P. Senator from Texas, should be the nation's next Secretary of Defense. Gorey hustled over to Room 608 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. But he knew the outcome even before the vote was taken. "After I got there, two Senators, Republicans John McCain and Pete Wilson, arrived," Gorey recalls. "I could see by their glum expressions that they knew Tower did not have the votes...
...prescience comes with the territory. Gorey is, after all, no stranger to Capitol controversies involving senatorial indiscretions. Since he last covered Congress, he has kept TIME's readers abreast of a number of national scandals, from Chappaquiddick to Watergate to Iran-contra. Although last week's vote against Tower ran strictly along party lines, Gorey hastens to point out that the flap is not as partisan as it may seem. "Senators are co-workers who see one another daily, travel together and become friends," Gorey explains. "Senators do not exult in the fall of a colleague." Nor, contrary to popular...