WHEN A MORAL CRUSADER IS A LOSER

William J. Bennett gambled away more than $8 million -- he gambled away his
credibility

Oh gosh, Bill, it wasn't just money you gambled away.

I mean, if the stories had simply reported that you, William J. Bennett,
once the nation's education secretary and drug czar, lost a few bucks in
your regular poker game, then most of us would think you're just an average
guy.

Even if some of your poker mates happen to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court,
with names like Rehnquist and Scalia, I'm sure they ask you to pass the
peanuts, just like anyone else.

But it isn't just poker. At least according to Newsweek and Washington
Monthly, you're a high-rolling gambler who has lost more than $8 million at
casinos in the past decade. Eight million! Enough to bankroll a whole darn
school!

No word on how much you've won, but anyone who knows anything about casino
gambling knows it probably isn't as much as you've lost. Nobody wins much at
casinos. How else do they stay in business and afford to pay inexplicably
expensive entertainers who last recorded a new song when Eisenhower was
president?

If those federal jobs were the only ones on your resume, this wouldn't be so
embarrassing. People in high office in Washington have done worse, a lot
worse. Especially if they're named Clinton, as you've told us many times.

The trouble is that you are known as one of the nation's "most relentless
moral crusaders," a man who makes millions writing books and delivering
speeches railing against the vices of modern America, all the selfish,
destructive behaviors we tolerate under the guise of liberty, all the ways
we have strayed as a nation from our moral core and manifold destiny.

This is one of the downsides to being a moral crusader: To maintain your
credibility (never mind your tax deduction), you have to walk the walk.

I know what your defenders say. You've never actually railed against
gambling per se, even if your social conservative allies have called it a
"cancer on the American body politic" that is "stealing food from the mouths
of children." Divorcees, homosexuals, peaceniks -- those folks have been at
the receiving end of your clever, withering criticism. Not gamblers.

So you get an A-plus on consistency. If you choose to sit all day in a
windowless casino -- sometimes, according to the reports, two or three days
at a stretch -- and toss away your hard-earned money for some unfathomable
sense of relaxation, you may be stupid. You may be addicted. You may be
going broke. But you are not inconsistent.

Good for you, Bill.

Only it doesn't wash.

A penny-ante poker game with the Supremes is one thing, but heavy,
compulsive gambling -- $8 million will fit that description -- is a social
ill, associated with drug use, domestic violence, child abuse and
bankruptcy. That is why the recent spread of legalized gambling -- propelled
often by state governments starved for revenue by your conservative pals in
Washington -- has caused so much soul-searching. Is government solving one
set of social problems by inviting another?

So you can't dismiss this as private behavior that is no one else's
business. You don't say that about alcohol when it becomes addictive. You
don't say that about divorce when it is shown to harm children. You surely
don't say that about sexual behaviors not to your liking.

None of these are illegal, just as your gambling is not illegal. But each
has the potential to rend the social fabric and erode the virtues
undergirding our society and indeed all of civilization.

At least that's the way I understood your moral crusade -- that the
"unrestricted personal liberty" supposedly rampant in America today must be
checked by a renewed sense of virtue and adherence to a common good. To
preach that -- and from that height, to judge the behavior of others -- is a
job not for the weak of heart, certainly not for anyone unwilling to put his
entire life up for similar moral scrutiny.

In the moral crusader game, Bill, at some point you have to make your bet
and show your cards. You bet you could become the moral conscience of the
nation -- but at the moment, your hand isn't looking so good.

2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer Jane R. Eisner is a columnist for
Philadelphia Inquirer.