LOONY RIGHT TRIPS UP BUSH

George W. Bush got to talk about the US economy this weekend, thereby
reaching a landmark in his Republican presidential campaign. He was,
of course, asked about the only subject the reporters are interested
in - cocaine - but for once 'Junior' Bush ignored the question.

Yet the pressure on Bush and his past with drugs grew into a mighty
swell, coming not from the media but from the last place that America
expected - and Bush wanted - the Republican Right. And it came not in
the form of accusations - quite the reverse. It came from a sudden
flurry of prominent Republicans calling Bush's bluff by 'coming out'
to declare their indulgence in the white powder - and other offences
on the list of the Seven Deadly Republican Sins.

In New Mexico, Governor Gary Johnson came forward to talk to the
press, including The Observer, about his past with cocaine and
marijuana. 'It was not something that anybody would ever have known,
but I knew that I should fess up, and if I didn't win, so be it.'

On Wednesday, Johnson was joined by a Republican running to succeed
his distinguished father in the US Senate representing Rhode Island,
Lincoln Chafee.

Chafee came on a local television show and said without blinking, when
asked the only question every politician was asked last week: 'Yes, I
have.'

He said he had snorted cocaine and smoked marijuana 'several
times'.

And unlike President Clinton - ever-resistant to the toxic blend of
truth and history - yes, Chafee said, he did inhale.

Next day the spotlight switched to another practice which Republican
commandments traditionally place even higher than Class A drugs in the
'Thou Shalt Not' ratings: homosexuality. Steve May, an up-and-coming
hard-right Republican just elected to the Arizona legislature, is a
Mormon and a soldier. But, on Thursday, May issued forth his loudest
disclosure yet about how he met and dated his first gay companion.

The emergence of Republican politicians talking unabashedly about
homosexuality or 'shovelling snow' has both reflected and propelled an
intriguing sea change in the coming presidential election and in
American politics.

They have enabled the Republican Right to become the unexpected
claimants to 'wacky' and fringe-living social terrain, as the
Democrats scramble from under the ruins of the Monica Lewinsky scandal
to present themselves as Vice-President Al Gore's woodentops, who
never took drugs and barely ever had sex.

As the Democrats become the social conservatives, the Right meanwhile
addresses the hypocrisies in drug policy and homosexuality. In
addition, there have been legions of outright 'wacko' candidates,
iconoclasts and libertarians brandishing rhetoric that traditionally
belonged to the Left.

It is a phenomenon that Gary Wills, the literary critic and political
commentator, takes seriously, seeing a blend of successful populism
with libertarianism and a bit of 'anti-intellectual chest-thumping'.
And, above all, it is the exposure of what Jesse 'The Body' Ventura,
Governor of Minnesota, calls 'high-pocrisy'.

Ventura is father to the 'wacko' candidates. Last week, he returned to
the ring to referee his first World Wrestling Federation match -
giving as good as he got to the beasts of brawn and the busty female
'trainers' in sequined bikinis. The evening was marked by a bar fight
and someone hitting the Governor with a metal folding chair.

But beneath The Body there rips an undertow of other, similar types.
In Memphis - the city in which Martin Luther King was killed and which
has spawned a million Elvis sightings - the mayoral election has been
turned by the maverick Right into something like a drag queen show.
The battle is neck-and-neck between two candiates and the balance - if
not the mayoral seat itself - may be clinched by Jerry 'The King'
Lawler, who goes around dressed not as 'King' Elvis but as a British
monarch, complete with crown and ermine regal robes.

Lawler, also a wrestler and sponsored by Ventura, shares his mentor's
penchant for straight talk: 'I'd like to see things from your point of
view,' he teased the incumbent Mayor, 'but I just can't seem to get my
head up my rear end.'

That's about the only policy of Lawler's the voters can remember, but
they love it.

Most important, the spurt of cocaine confessions has highlighted from
within the Republican Party not only the inconsistencies between
Bush's past and his model for how Americans should live, but the abyss
between Bush's erstwhile cocaine habit and his current drug policies.
Despite his confessions, Bush is Governor of a state which prides
itself on a pitiless imprisonment policy on drugs. Possession of less
than a gram of cocaine can mean incarceration.

Chafee refused to commit himself on policy. He recalled 'very
tumultuous times' and said he said he knew that, with the cocaine
question doing the rounds of Bush, President Clinton and Mayor Rudy
Giuliani of New York, his turn would come.

'I struggled with what's the politically correct answer. But in the
end, honesty is the best policy. It was part of the culture.

'People are tolerant, and if you are forthright and honest with the
public, you have nothing to hide.'

It's the kind of remark that Clinton and Bush should find utterly
disarming - but not as troublesome as those from Governor Johnson.
Johnson is as conservative as any Republican when it comes to the
death penalty, crime, taxes and religion. But on drugs, he is a
libertarian and a heretic.

He opposes the criminalisation of drugs, on grounds of cost and
morality. 'We are spending incredible amounts of our resources on
incarceration,' he says. 'I've done a cost-benefit analysis, and this
one really stinks.'

Johnson speaks, in a faxed interview with The Observer, about what he
calls 'an incredible hypocrisy here, that there are 78 million
Americans who have used illegal drugs, and I don't think 78 million
Americans who would discount themselves from running for President or
for public office for that reason.'

But that's not all. 'If I still did drugs, if I drank, I would not be
sitting here today. Bad choice. Don't do illegal drugs. But is it
criminal? Direct a war toward drug use - but to go to jail?

'I don't know about George Bush, but I do know about 78 million other
Americans - given the right set of circumstances, and they're in jail.

'They've got a felony on their record and this is not something
policywise that I think the country should be doing.'

He ends up by lambasting his own law enforcement team, and the hostility of
New Mexico's State Attorney, John Kelly: 'They are only looking at the
crime side of the issue, a knee-jerk response.'

Johnson's opposition to drug prohibition may not be shared by his
fellow Republicans - but it is respected. The right-wing League of
Women Voters, for instance, is sponsoring a forum on drug
legalisation.

And the Governor is being courted by the hard-right libertarian CATO
Institute in Washington DC.