Pete Hegseth confirmation: In 1989, senators faced a similar situation very differently.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Last week, writing about Pete Hegseth’s hearing to be confirmed as secretary of defense, New York Times columnist David Brooks condemned the Senate committee’s Democrats for obsessing over the nominee’s “moral qualifications”—the allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual harassment—rather than his views on national security. In the end, Chairman Nunn declared, “I cannot in good conscience vote to put an individual at the top of the chain of command when his history of excessive drinking is such that he would not be selected to command a missile wing, a SAC bomber squadron, or a Trident missile submarine.” The other Democrats followed along, some also criticizing Tower’s lucrative work as a defense consultant in his brief time out of Congress, which—though it had raised few problems in their minds a few weeks earlier—now seemed a disqualifying conflict of interest. On the substantive issues, through his years in the Senate, Tower was an unbridled hawk—he never saw a weapon system that he didn’t fully fund—but also a stalwart of the old order at a time when the Cold War was winding down, budget cuts were looming, defense technology was rapidly changing, and ideas for reforming the Pentagon were in the air. A Republican aide in the Senate said to me at the time, “Can you imagine the nightmare we’d be going through if John Tower was secretary of defense?” Tower emerged from his confirmation battle intensely bitter.