Consequences
Tower, John C.
working—but he also had a reputation as a mean S.O.B. Consequences does nothing to undercut that reputation, as everyone from his second wife to John Warner to Teddy Kennedy to Sam Donaldson takes...
...on so many occasions by so many difEx-U.S...
...Now, run...
...Since the reader has no way of evaluating the merits of Tower's charges against her, he comes across as a bully and a crybaby...
...Consequences does nothing to undercut that reputation, as everyone from his second wife to John Warner to Teddy Kennedy to Sam Donaldson takes it in the neck...
...His argument seems to be teaching post at a small college in that, in accepting lucrative consulting Wichita Falls to the Senate seat vacated arrangements with the defense industry by Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1961, is after he left the Senate in 1985, he did probably one of only ten men in the nothing illegal, unethical, or immoral...
...If it wasn't John Tower as a David versus Goliath, as a little old downing all those tumblers of scotch, Republican pitted against big bad Dem- who was that short guy from Texas we ocrats, as a man more sinned against kept hearing stories about all those than sinning...
...putation for being smart and hardTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 39...
...A man accused of being a lush should have resisted the temptation to repeat old war stories about a boozed-up colleague who had to be propped up in his Senate chair to keep from falling over...
...LI CONSEQUENCES: A PERSONAL AND POLITICAL MEMOIR John C. Tower/Little, Brown/389 pp...
...Joe Queenan is a frequent contributor As a senator, John Tower had a reto Barron's and other publications...
...I am mere-process, the tensions between the ex- ly saying that his explanation for the ecutive and legislative branches, and the attacks—Sam Nunn, Paul Weyrich, and most cost-effective way to achieve a Andrea Mitchell Were Out To Get Me—strong national defense...
...Wall credenza or not, I think everyone is glad Dick Cheney got the job instead...
...there's as this one...
...Thoughtful, nothing illegal, unethical, or immoral carefully organized, and not excessively about deep-sixing the nomination of a larded with homespun wisdom or crack- man widely perceived to be in the back erbarrel philosophy, Consequences in- pocket of his former employers...
...A man who served twenty-four years in the Senate should be above self-auditing his old deli receipts to prove that he wasn't hitting the sauce all those years...
...But neither did the produced a book as lucid and readable senators who voted against him...
...1n the end, Tower's rancorous at- tempts to clear his name merely demean him...
...The book is straightforcars into ravines...
...22.95 Joe Queenan Bookshelves across the nation his rise to political prominence with .U) abound with trashy page-turners testy and often mean-spirited attacks lionizing men who drink too much, talk on the Democratic party, the media, and too loud, fondle women's buttocks, most particularly Senator Sam Nunn, chase secretaries around desks, take chairman of the Senate Armed Services their clothes off and dance atop pianos Committee, who was the principal agent with Russian ballerinas, and drive their of his disgrace...
...Tower's attacks on his wife, Lilla, whom he portrays as the Machiavellian engine of his disgrace, are ignoble, because she doesn't have any real forum in which to defend herself...
...I am book would have been an exhaustive not saying that Tower was or did all of and scholarly discourse on the political the things he is accused of...
...whatever his failings, has never danced Tower is equally unconvincing on the on top of a piano...
...Make that five...
...The Senate is, only cabinet-designee of a newly elected after all, filled with hateful, venal men, President to be rejected by the Senate yet most senators somehow manage to in the history of this glorious but fun- stagger through their legislative careers damentally unpredictable republic, read- without being called drunks, womanily admits that he has not written the izers, fondlers of buttocks, or con-book he would like to have written...
...subject of his relationships with defense Tower, who went directly from a contractors...
...But these attacks are directed at public figures who have the means and the wherewithal to defend themselves...
...You tersperses Tower's fond recollections of took the money, John, the guys seemed to be saying...
...That sorters with Russian ballerinas...
...A former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been accused of chasing women around desks should not write, "I would have had to be a high hurdler to chase anybody around the desk, since it was L-shaped and linked to a wall credenza...
...Now along comes a ward, comprehensive, and combative...
...This book is a is not enough to win over the reader booze-and-broads affair, a vindictive who, if he's like most Americans, al-but ultimately humiliating riposte in ready thinks everyone in Washington is which the fallen senator depicts himself a liar anyway...
...In short, a man who, years...
...Some of his attacks are fair: Andrea Mitchell is a poor excuse for a journalist, Teddy Kennedy is a hypocrite, John Warner is a lightweight, John Glenn is a space cadet in more ways than one...
...As a literary wife-beater, to coin a phrase...
...Senator John C. Tower, the ferent types of observers...
...United States Senate who could have Okay, so he didn't...
...book by a man who insists that he does not drink too much, does not talk too loud, fondles nary a female buttock, T t is not, however, convincing, be-never chases secretaries around desks, 1 cause the sheer number and variety does not now, nor has he ever, taken off of allegations against the author make his clothes and danced on a piano with the reader wonder how such a nice man a Russian ballerina, and leaves his car could have so many nasty enemies, how in the garage, not in some gully, arroyo, so many falsehoods could be repeated or ditch...
Vol. 24 • April 1991 • No. 4
