The last time alcohol poisoned a defense nomination

The nominee for defense secretary was in trouble for carousing, transgressing with women and liquor.

President George H.W. Bush was trying to save his choice, so he assigned a top White House official to have a private chat with two New York Times White House reporters.

Gerald Boyd and I went over to the White House one cold day in February 1989 to hear what the official had to say about John Tower, a Texas senator and the chair of the Armed Services Committee, so diminutive that he could barely peek over the top of some lecterns. Could the president justify putting a man in charge of the Pentagon who was prone to drunkenness and chasing secretaries around desks?

What if, the official asked us in a wheedling tone, Tower gave up hard liquor and drank only white wine?

Gerald and I just stared at the official. This guy was going to start bargaining with us over the type of alcohol that Tower could drink?

What if, the official pressed on, Tower had only two glasses of wine a night?

Gerald and I were nonplussed to find ourselves the arbiters of louche behavior, pulled into a negotiating session over inebriants. What next? Tower would promise to chase only one secretary a week?

What if, the official said, in a last desperate bid, Tower had only one glass of wine a night?

White House officials kept trying to make a deal. They told Gerald that Tower had told the president and two key senators that he was sticking to two glasses of wine a day on the advice of doctors who had treated him for a malignant polyp in his colon. But doctors interviewed by Gerald said that this sort of advice for that sort of health problem was puzzling. The White House also volunteered that Tower’s medical reports showed no evidence of liver damage. What if, Bush officials asked, senators were allowed to choose a physician who would be permitted to interview Tower’s physicians?

In the end, the Senate rejected Tower’s nomination, the first time since 1959 that the chamber had refused to consent to a president’s Cabinet nominee. It was shocking, given how clubby the Senate was in those days and how freewheeling many senators were. Some of the senators who went up to vote against Tower had alcohol on their breath.

Bush learned the hard way what Donald Trump will learn with Pete Hegseth: Sometimes you have to cut your losses. As William Gladstone said, the first requisite of a good prime minister is to be a good butcher.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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