For Sam Nunn, who believes that the tests of private relations and public life cannot be different simply because it is impossible to split a whole person in two, it was a painful admission. A few days before Nunn would lead the charge against John Tower on the Senate floor, the 50-year-old chairman of the Armed Services Committee sat in his office under the influence of two diet Cokes and finally confessed that he once stole some eggs from a neighbor who kept chickens.
That was around 40 years ago in Perry, Ga., the small town about a hundred miles south...