Friendship Has Limits

By MARGARET CARLSON

Honeymoons have a way of ending abruptly. One day it's roses and heart-shaped beds; the next, it's dishes to be done and garbage taken out. George Bush last week had to face up to the messy chores of governing and give up his notion that making nice with the Democrats could work forever.

Since his Inauguration, Bush has been trying to keep intact the tacit gentlemen's agreement forged by his fuzzy call for an era of bipartisanship and high ethical standards: if everyone in power would just get along with everyone else in power, all would be well. A 51% federal salary increase would quietly take effect, the Cabinet could be swiftly and pleasantly confirmed, sleaze would disappear in a warm glow of mutual trust. If everyone would make the same rosy economic assumptions, money would be found to pay for the savings and loan cleanup just unveiled and the budget just proposed.

Alas, Washington has gone all partisan on the President. The new mood stems not just from Congressmen's crankiness over fumbling their pay raise. Capitol Hill does not want to take the rap for the irreconcilable differences between what Bush is promising in his budget and what the Treasury will allow him to do. Nor is the Senate Armed Services Committee going to rubber-stamp the nomination of former Senator John Tower as Secretary of Defense.

Last week Bush also got a whiff of trouble in what he promised would be a squeaky clean Administration. It came from none other than his chief ethics officer, C. Boyden Gray, the man responsible for vetting the nomination of John Tower and advising others in the Administration that they must give up outside income and jobs: Secretary of State James Baker, for one, would have to resolve the potential conflict posed by his holdings in Chemical New York Corp., a bank that holds a significant amount of Third World debt.

But Gray had an ethical problem of his own. Newspaper reports disclosed that during Bush's eight years as Vice President, Gray made as much as $50,000 a year as chairman and a director of his family's $500 million communications company, while collecting his pay as Bush's counsel. Bush did not fire Gray, or even hold his nose. The President defended the legality and benign intent of his aide, showing the same kind of myopia toward one of his own that got Ronald Reagan in trouble. By midweek, however, Gray had resigned from the corporation and put his assets in a blind trust.

Bush has an even bigger problem getting John Tower confirmed as Defense Secretary. Initially, it looked as if the Armed Services Committee would ultimately observe protocol: the President's nominee does not have to be someone the committee members would choose, just someone they can stomach. "Ironbutt," as Tower was known in the Senate for his imperious ways and wait-'em-out negotiating style, would never win a popularity contest. Nevertheless, the hearings started out as a love fest, with the former chair of the committee receiving a round of applause at the end of his first day of testimony.

Club rules required that the messy downside of the selection be glossed over. Sure, the twice-divorced Tower liked to take a drink and was frequently in the company of women not his wife, but that was his business. More disturbing was the fact that he collected $750,000 in consulting fees from defense contractors in the two years after he returned from serving as the Reagan Administration's chief strategic arms negotiator during START talks in Geneva. (The money was for "enlightened speculation," testified Tower, not inside information.) Senators who may harbor the hope of someday taking a twirl through the revolving door seemed inclined to swallow that one as well.

Yet every time it looked as if the nomination would come to a vote, another sensational allegation surfaced. When the committee heard that one of Tower's alleged affairs was an encounter with an East German woman in Geneva, the security risk was too much to ignore. Last Tuesday the FBI was also called back to investigate allegations that Unisys Corp. had made a campaign contribution in exchange for a meeting with Tower when he was a Senator.

Up to this point, Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, who will carry most Democrats with him, had not uttered a partisan word. Cautious and conservative, the Georgia Senator had kept his distance from the messy personal business. He had passed lightly over the conflict-of-interes t questions and was expected to vote for confirmation. Then the White House blundered by giving committee Republicans a peek at what the FBI had come up with; Nunn was excluded. Annoyed, he announced that if he had to vote that day, he would vote against Tower.

The allegations of heavy drinking were particularly troubling, Nunn said, since Tower would be "in the chain of command that has control over the arsenal of the United States. The Secretary of Defense has to, in my view, have clarity of thought at all times. There's no such thing as an eight-hour day in that job."

Suddenly Tower seemed doomed. New names began to float through Washington: Elliot Richardson, Donald Rumsfeld, James Schlesinger. Bush intervened, inviting Nunn to the White House for a briefing. Reporters were summoned to the Oval Office, where Bush carried the damage control a step further by insisting, "I have seen nothing, not one substantive fact, that makes me change my mind about John Tower's ability . . ." To emphasize the point, Tower was seated next to the President at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

This revived the gasping Tower nomination for the moment. But with Congress in recess until next week, there is plenty of time for new charges to leak out -- and for the snicker factor to grow. Tower's reputation as a ladies' man, which he took no trouble to hide, has become more laughable than scandalous. Even now, he flaunts his latest companion, who sat blond and bored behind him each day as he testified. Whether out of ignorance or arrogance, Tower made headlines when he jokingly threatened to fondle her at lunch in a hotel restaurant during a recess in the hearings. "Not here, John," she protested.

In Washington titans fall not from a single blow but from a thousand small cuts. Few believe Tower could survive a "no" from Nunn. Even if the Bush Administration prevailed in a confirmation fight, Nunn could make life so miserable that Tower might wish he were back speculating in an enlightened way for the LTV company. But Nunn has been careful to leave himself the option of voting yes.

Why has George Bush, who began his presidency by emphasizing high standards, found himself so quickly saddled with so many embarrassments? Part of the answer is that, ethics aside, friendship and political alliances go a long way with Bush -- and with the rest of Washington. If Tower does not show up in public drunk, with an Iranian arms merchant on one arm and a female KGB officer on the other, he may make it yet.

With reporting by Michael Duffy and Bruce van Voorst/Washington