Volume 38, Number 12 · June 27, 1991
Underachiever
By Nicholas Lemann
Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir
by John G. Tower
Little, Brown, 388 pp., $22.95
John Tower's life and career, like his recent death, seem more than most lives and careers to have depended on accident. Certainly his claim to historical importance rests mainly on a series of unusual episodes, rather than on the sustained accomplishment that might be expected of a four-term United States senator. He was, of course, the first cabinet nominee of an incoming president to be rejected by the Senate: this is largely what we now most remember him for, and it is at the center of his recent autobiography. As chairman of the Tower Commission, which investigated the Iran-contra scandal, he helped to make George Bush's presidency possible by producing a report that insisted with an overall air of authority on Bush's blamelessness. Moreover, though it is not widely recognized, Tower was instrumental in formulating the enormous defense-budget increases of the first Reagan administration, which set the tone and the programs for the 1980s in foreign policy, domestic economics, and political debate. Finally, Tower was the first Republican US senator since Reconstruction elected from a former Confederate state.
Review, 4435 words
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