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Bush had close calls on DUI record in '96 and '98
By Boston.com Staff, 11/03/00 In 1996, Texas Governor George W. Bush almost had to answer questions under oath about his drunk driving record. But he was saved the potential embarassment of acknowledging his 1976 drunk driving arrest because of his position.
Bush and other jurors were expected to hear a misdemeanor drunken-driving case. But before the case even began, the governor was dismissed as a juror because of conflict-of-interest concerns by one of the lawyers involved. As governor, the lawyer argued, Bush might eventually be asked to pardon someone he had judged while serving as a juror. As part of the normal jury screening process, Bush would have had to answer questions under oath about drinking and driving and whether he had ever been involved in a similar case. At the time, reporters outside the courthouse asked Bush whether he had ever been arrested for driving while intoxicated."I do not have a perfect record as a youth," he said then. The incident was reported at the time in a number of local media outlets including the Dallas Morning News, the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle. Stories about the case, and Bush's role in it, remain in those newspapers' archives.Two years later, Bush had another opportunity to speak about the arrest. Salon.com reported today that in 1998 Bush denied being arrested at any point after 1968. When Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater asked Bush "if he'd ever been arrested after 1968" -- that's when Bush allegedly stole a Christmas wreath from a New Haven, Conn., hotel room -- Bush said "No." Before he could elaborate further, his press secretary, Karen Hughes, stopped the interview.It was Hughes who had to brief the press on Bush's DUI arrest in 1976 after a Maine TV station broke the story last night.
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The New York tabloids had a field day with the news that Bush had been arrested for drunk driving.
