Is This Goodbye?

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After a month as President, George Bush had his first chance to make a splash on the world scene. But as he began a series of one-on-one meetings with some of the foreign leaders who went to Japan for the funeral of Emperor Hirohito, Bush suffered a slap from which not even the 6,800 miles between Washington and Tokyo could remove the sting. Disregarding fervent pleas by the President, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 11 to 9 along strict party lines to reject his nomination of former Senator John Tower to be Secretary of Defense. The main reason: Democrats on the committee said they could not accept the Administration's claims that Tower had shaken the excessive drinking habits he displayed in the 1970s.

Bush, for whom loyalty is close to a religion, quickly announced that he would carry the fight to the Senate floor. A vote by the full chamber may take place this week, assuming Tower does not take the White House off the hook by withdrawing. Considering that the Democrats hold a 55-to-45 majority -- and that, for all the sanctimonious clucking about Tower's personal habits, last week's vote was overtly partisan -- Bush is likely to suffer a second and perhaps more damaging loss.

Even if, against all odds, Tower squeaks through to confirmation, he will be seriously damaged. As Pentagon boss, his effectiveness would be hampered by having to deal with a hostile Senate Armed Services Committee whose chairman, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, had led the battle against him.

It was difficult to see how Bush could emerge a winner from the Tower fiasco. Whatever the outcome, his personal and political judgment has once again been called into question. He insisted on appointing Tower, a longtime political ally, over the objections of aides who knew the nominee's vulnerabilities. The decision was all too reminiscent of Bush's selection of Dan Quayle, who as Vice President still comes across to many people as a lightweight. Other debatable appointments were those of Boyden Gray, the ethics chief with ethical problems of his own, and chief of staff John Sununu, ! an abrasive former New Hampshire Governor untrained in the ways of Washington. Sununu was insisting "we've got the votes" to confirm Tower over the powerful Nunn's opposition, a boast echoed by other White House officials only a day before the committee vote. Bush's political judgment was no better. It was the President who proclaimed last Tuesday that an FBI report had "gunned down" the allegations of heavy drinking and womanizing by Tower.

Bush's widely touted "honeymoon" with Congress, already endangered by his vagueness on the budget, was ending sooner than that of any new President in recent memory. Though the President cannot get anything done without the cooperation of at least some members of the Democratic congressional majorities, the task of wooing them will now be harder. Within the Administration, the absence of a Secretary of Defense able to assert the Pentagon's view will prolong the review of foreign and national-security problems that Bush insists on completing before he makes major international- policy moves.