Bush Chooses Cheney for Defense : Wyoming Congressman Picked After Rejection of Tower

President Bush on Friday named Rep. Dick Cheney of Wyoming as defense secretary, moving with surprising speed to leave behind the controversy caused by John Tower’s rejection by the Senate.

Leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee quickly issued a statement praising Cheney and said confirmation hearings would begin this week.

Bush hailed Cheney as a “widely respected man of principle” and dismissed the Tower saga by saying, “Look, that’s history.”

Bush said he expected that Cheney would win confirmation “very fast.”

Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole quickly hailed the appointment in a barbed comment that reflected the bitterness lingering from the Tower confirmation struggle.

“He’s tough. That’s what we wanted. A tough, tough, tough guy,” Dole said of Cheney. “This time it will be a confirmation, not an execution.”

Cheney, 48, is a sixth-term conservative congressman from Wyoming who served as White House chief of staff in the Ford Administration in the mid-1970s.

“Obviously things have moved very quickly in the last 24 hours,” Cheney said in referring to Bush’s swift, overnight search for a replacement candidate for Tower. “I did agonize. It was not an easy decision.”

Tower’s nomination was killed on Thursday on a near party-line vote of 53 to 47 in the Democratic-controlled Senate. He was defeated by concerns over his drinking habits, his relationships with women and his work as a paid defense industry consultant after leaving government service.

Bush repeated his earlier accusations that Tower had been unfairly treated during his losing campaign for confirmation, but expressed an eagerness not to dwell on the rejection. He said Democratic leaders in the Senate “had given their word to me and that means a lot” that they were willing to cooperate with the new Administration.

But even as Bush reached out, Vice President Dan Quayle turned up the heat and accused Senate Democrats of engaging in “a McCarthyite mud-slinging campaign” against Tower and waging an “assault on the powers of the presi dency.”

Bush turned aside questions about Quayle’s remarks by saying he hadn’t read them. “So I can’t tell you whether he speaks for me. I speak for myself. He speaks for himself.”

Bush thus moved to put the Tower defeat behind him swiftly--and if the speed was a surprise, so was the selection.

Cheney’s name had not figured in any of the speculation that arose in the hours after Tower’s rejection.

But his nomination quickly drew praise from the Senate, which will vote on his confirmation.

Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) said, “He’s a very able and impressive person. . . . He’s one of the smartest people in Congress.”

“An excellent choice,” said Sen. Charles S. Robb, the freshman from Virginia who was one of the last Democrats to announce his opposition to Tower.

In a joint statement issued by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, and Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Republican, the senators said Cheney “is well-known and highly respected by the members of the Senate. We have worked with him on many issues involving national defense and intelligence matters.”

The senators said hearings will begin this week and the committee’s work will be completed “as expeditiously as possible consistent with the President and the nominee providing the requisite background and financial material and consistent with thoroughness and fairness.”

In response to reporters’ questions on the Strategic Defense Initiative and a series of other defense issues, Cheney said, “I have extensive views on defense policy but I don’t believe I’ll share them today.”

‘Best, Proper Choice’

Bush was asked about his past declarations that Tower was the best qualified candidate to head the Pentagon.

“I said that on December whatever it was, and now we’re in March whatever it is. And as of today Dick Cheney is the best and proper choice,” the President said in an appearance before reporters shortly after his departure for a weekend at Camp David.

Cheney said he was “honored to be asked by the President to join his Administration.” He said his first contact from the Administration came Thursday afternoon, presumably shortly after Tower’s nomination was scuttled by the Senate.

Cheney said he underwent heart bypass surgery last August, but returned to work three weeks later. He said he had checked with his doctor before accepting Bush’s offer of the appointment, and was assured that his health posed no barrier.

Many Candidates

Many potential candidates were mentioned for the job, including former Rep. Jack Edwards (R-Ala.); Sens. William Cohen (R-Maine) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska); former defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and James Schlesinger; former CIA deputy director Bobby Inman; Paul O’Neill, chairman and chief executive officer of Alcoa, and Norman Augustine, chairman and chief executive officer of Martin Marietta Corp., an aerospace firm.

Marlin Fitzwater, at a late-morning briefing, said Bush reviewed candidates from “any number of people and sources in the government, in the White House and outside the government as well.”

Bush went through the same drill before choosing Tower last December.

Meanwhile, Quayle flew to Indianapolis and, in a speech, harshly criticized Senate Democrats and warned that there will be a lingering bitterness over the Tower fight.

‘Feeling of Outrage’

“Never in all my years in the Senate have I encountered anything like the feeling of outrage that exists today among my former Republican Senate colleagues,” he said. “Never have I encountered such anger and bitterness in the Senate chamber.”

Quayle said “the harmful consequences of the Tower affair will not soon pass. I’m afraid that the misguided Democratic assault on the powers of the presidency will continue.”