BUSH WOULD BE WISE TO TELL THE TRUTH

Parents and politicians share the same problem: They are peppered with
questions about their past.

Did he or didn't he?

Do I care?

Once again, in our relentless search for "truth" (or at least something to
write and argue about), Texas Gov. George W. Bush is being grilled about
drug use in his past. Ever the politician, the Republican presidential
candidate is giving us all manners of answers, depending on what the
question is and who is doing the inquiring.

We now know, for instance, that he has been drug-free for 25 years. We also
know that he was a heavy drinker until a dozen years ago, but that he has
been faithful to his wife of 21 years. What's still up in the air is the
Big C question: Has he used cocaine?

Lots of people are telling him to come clean. Learn, they say, from Bill
Clinton's mistakes. Clinton ducked questions about drug use for years, only
to later tell an interviewer that he had tried marijuana while studying
abroad. And didn't inhale.

For the past few days, I've read about Bush's dilemma in the papers,
watched his anger on television, and thought: Here we go again. We've
barely recovered from sex, cigars and Monicagate. Now this.

I, for one, belong to the camp that believes private matters, while morally
reprehensible, don't belong in the public arena. I want Bush to keep his
trap shut. What's more, bombarded by the Topic That Won't Go Away, I keep
thinking about how the rest of us would fare against such a line of
questioning. We all have something in our past we are not proud of,
something we'd rather not talk about.

And we don't have to, either, until we run for public office -- or have
teenage children. Kids, like political pundits, may say the darnedest
things, but they also ask the darnedest questions. Especially when trying
to justify themselves. If you think the media is annoyingly insistent and
cruelly cutting, consider the unforgiving harshness of a critical
adolescent. In the long run, I'd rather face public humiliation than
private reprobation from my loved ones.

The funny thing about this whole did-he-or-didn't-he issue is that the
people who are asking -- and the people who are answering -- belong to the
generation that vowed 30 years ago to be open, to retaliate against
hypocrisy, to let everything hang out. Now we've come full circle to
confront our past transgressions, to be reminded that self-righteousness is
a double-edged sword that invariably slays everyone who brandishes it.

Parenthood, like public office, tends to cloak us with a sudden
conservatism, the need to protect our image and a niggling worry about how
the past will haunt our future. No wonder that when the kids (or the press,
in a politician's case) ask us about our experiences with that dangerously
titillating troika of sex, drugs and alcohol, we're not sure what to say:
lie, 'fess up or tell half-truths. Yet, what and how we as parents answer
may be an object lesson for George W. Bush.

"As far as my children are concerned," a friend of two teenagers once told
me, "I'm as pure as the driven snow. What they don't know won't hurt them.
I want to remain somewhat of a role model for my daughter, and if I tell
her the truth, she's going to say to me, `Who are you to talk if you did
it?' "

On the other hand, I know someone else who believes in telling all. This is
how she shows her three children the consequences of her mistakes and how
to avoid them.

For what it's worth, I will offer George W. this: I tend to be leery of the
person with the seamless life and the golden past, the man who portrays
himself in a way I could never hope to match. An enchanted and unblemished
history makes me doubt the humanity of its claimant, makes me wonder about
his ability to understand and empathize.

If he made no mistakes, how did he learn? If he did not face temptation,
can he truly differentiate between choices? If he has never fallen, how do
I know he can pick himself up again?