The Senate has been here before and delaying tactics went the way of the Democrats.
Nearly 30 years ago, in a case with similarities to the current battle over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the Senate struggled with allegations of boozing and womanizing by former President George H.W. Bush’s pick to run the Pentagon.
And like Kavanaugh, a prominent federal appeals judge, the nominee had stature. He was longtime Texas Sen. John Tower, a titan in the defense world.
He seemed an easy choice to win the job in 1989, and swiftly. But Senate Democrats turned on him and seized on reports and an FBI background check that citized drinking.
The nomination stalled when the FBI found that Tower had a ”pattern of alcohol abuse” that he had moved to fix 1983.
The womanizing reports followed and one conservative activist, Paul Weyrich, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “Over the course of many years, I have encountered the nominee in a condition—lack of sobriety—as well as with women to whom he was not married.”
The chairman of the committee, former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, ended up delaying the confirmation process and after three months the Senate eventually rejected Tower.
Politico recalled:
Tower responded to the allegations that he had abused alcohol. “Have I ever drunk to excess? Yes,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “Am I alcohol-dependent? No. Have I always been a good boy? Of course not. But I’ve never done anything disqualifying. That’s the point.”
Republicans have suggested that the Democrats are playing a similar delay game with Kavanaugh.
Unlike the partisan war over Kavanaugh today, the Tower rejection was immediately met with bipartisan calls from both sides for peace. In the end, former Rep. Dick Cheney was confirmed as defense secretary in less than 10 days, a big stepping stone to being picked by Bush’s son, George W. Bush, as vice president.
