My Vintage Video: The McLaughlin, February 24, 1989

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John Tower, was a Republican Senator from Texas, elected in I believe 1960 and served four terms in the Senate. The first Republican elected statewide in Texas, in I don’t know, a hundred years or whatever. And was a very popular Republican in the Republican Party and very conservative as well. With a deep knowledge of foreign policy and national security issues while he was in Congress. But he wasn’t very popular with his colleagues in Congress in either party, especially in the Senate. And when President Bush nominates him in 1989 to be his Secretary of Defense and nothing bad had broken for him after that, Tower probably gets confirmed as Secretary of Defense even in a 55-45 Democratic Senate that year. Because he was very knowledgable about national security. But then a story breaks about his alcoholism and that he was a recovering alcoholic. And Senate Democrats didn’t need much more than that to vote him down.