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Queries of drug use dog Bush
Latest answers fail to douse media fire brewing over rumors
Yesterday Bush tried to put out the media fire over the persistent, unsubstantiated rumors of past cocaine use, telling reporters that he ''could have passed'' the FBI background checks his father, President George Bush, imposed on employees in his administration. Those checks required them be drug-free since 1974, Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said.
A day before, Bush told the Dallas Morning News that he could pass the current White House standard, which he said required no drug use for the past seven years.
Bush says unnamed rivals in the GOP field are spreading the gossip about cocaine, and he asserts he will not play ''the politics of personal destruction'' by making his private life a public issue. But what he won't say is that he never experimented with illegal drugs, fueling speculation that Bush has something to hide.
''I am going to tell people I made mistakes and that I have learned from my mistakes,'' Bush said during a campaign stop yesterday in Roanoke, Va. ''And if they like it, I hope they give me a chance. And if they don't like it, they can go find somebody else to vote for.''
While there is no evidence that Bush ever used cocaine, the rumors have gained altitude in part because Bush acknowledges he once sowed some wild oats - ''when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible,'' he often says - and also because he has been frank about other personal topics, like his marital fidelity and his heavy drinking before the age of 40. Bush is now 53.
The issue is also hard for Bush to dodge because each of the other eight GOP presidential candidates has confronted the issue, denying using illegal drugs, and at least two of them, Gary Bauer and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, say Bush should be honest and forthcoming if he used cocaine, which is a felony.
Bush says he gave time-specific answers over the last two days because they address the ''relevant'' questions of whether he could pass the same background checks that he would require in his own White House.
''Yesterday I was asked ... whether or not, if I became president, I will have background checks for the people that work for me at the White House,'' Bush said in Roanoke. ''And if I did, could I pass the challenge of a background check. My answer is absolutely.
''Not only could I pass the background check and the standards applied to today's White House, but I could have passed the background check and the standards applied on the most stringent conditions when my dad was the president of the United States - a 15-year period,'' he said.
Bush may have more to explain, however, since the Clinton administration actually requires the FBI to ask White House applicants about drug usage since their 18th birthdays. Ralph Reed, a GOP consultant who is working closely with the Bush campaign, said the candidate has said enough.
''This is it,'' Reed said in a telephone interview. ''Whatever the cost, somebody ultimately has to take a stand and say, `Enough is enough, I am not going to play the politics of gotcha.' Bush wants to maintain the moral high ground, which is the right thing to do. I think the public is hungering for it.''
Karlyn Bowman, who analyzes polls at the American Enterprise Institute, said the public is ''all over the map'' on the issue of peeking into a public person's private behavior. According to a Newsweek poll in January, 61 percent of Americans said politicians should refuse to answer questions about their personal lives, but the same respondents were split, 47 percent for and 47 percent against, over whether the media should probe the extramarital affairs, drug use, and business dealings of public officials.
A poll conducted last week for Fox News found that 69 percent of those surveyed wanted to know about a presidential candidate's past cocaine use, 41 percent said they cared if the candidate had used marijuana, and 28 percent thought a politician's past extramarital affair was relevant.
GOP candidate Steve Forbes said on CNN's ''Crossfire'' last night that it was ''absolutely false'' that any of his campaign aides were spreading rumors about Bush and cocaine, but he would fire them if they were. ''I vehemently deny it,'' Forbes said. ''We don't engage in rumors.''
Marvin Kalb, executive director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University, said Bush's ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy is admirable but untenable.
''I am sympathetic to any politician who has to face a rambunctious press, but at this stage it is unrealistic to imagine you can avoid it,'' Kalb said. ''The longer the siege continues, the worse it is likely to get for the governor. He has to face up to the need to answer these questions, because the press won't go away.''
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ASHINGTON - Texas Governor George W. Bush's smooth-running campaign for the GOP presidential nomination is facing its first crisis over the candidate's refusal to directly answer one question: ''Have you ever used illegal drugs?''