Bush’s Defense Choice

John Tower’s expertise on defense matters has never been questioned. The doubts raised about the former Texas senator’s suitability to be George Bush’s secretary of defense have turned instead on allegations involving his character and on the central question of whether he could make the tough decisions to control military spending that budget demands require. On the first point President-elect Bush says that he is satisfied with the findings of what has been described as the most exhaustive FBI background check ever conducted. On the second point Tower’s initial words can be taken as encouraging.

The bottom line, he said after Bush announced his nomination, is that “we must provide at least as much if not more defense for less money.” To do that “we must rationalize our force structure (and) refine and reform our management and procurement procedures.” This is a perfectly respectable program. It is also one that seems to have been promised by every defense secretary in the last 40 years. This doesn’t mean that Tower and Bush won’t work to make good on the promise. But the fact that getting more value for the defense dollar is still being talked about as a goal eight years after the Reagan Administration took office pledged to end Pentagon waste, fraud and mismanagement indicates how great are the institutional barriers that must be overcome.

To help remove those barriers the Bush transition team has been conducting a diligent but clearly frustrating search for top managers to fill the Defense Department slots just below Tower. It is probably from this administrative level that the painful recommendations will come about how defense spending should be cut. The outlines of the decisions to be made are clear: Some weapon systems will have to be dropped or their procurement stretched out, force levels may be further reduced, tough choices must be made between buying more weapons and spending for the training, spare parts and maintenance without which those weapons would be ineffective.

Congress has already signaled that it intends to have a large say in these decisions. Tower, who spent 19 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee and who later earned praise chairing the commission that investigated the White House’s role in the Iran-Contra affair, should be able to work more easily with Congress than, say, the abrasive and often dogmatic Caspar W. Weinberger was able to do. In a time of budgetary austerity and rapidly evolving political change, nothing less will do.