CANDIDATE IN TRANSITION

We've just seen George W. Bush's transition from privacy-craving
upholder of presidential dignity to incontinent blabbermouth.

What began with an honorable and perfectly defensible refusal to
discuss an irresponsible youth has degenerated into a strung-out
confessional that cannot end until he swears in agony that, for all
his sins, he never once as a child dipped live cats in hot tar and has
not wet the bed since at least prep school.

The discreet Bush first opened up just enough to tell us he never
cheated on his wife but was not a virgin when he married. Never mind
that this was none of our business. Then it came out that when he was
in high school, his own mother got so fed up with his cussing on a
golf course that she made him go sit in the car. None of this is the
behavior of a man who knows when to keep his mouth shut. How safe
would nuclear secrets be in the head of such a compulsive chatterer?

Now, of course, he has parted the curtains a bit farther to reveal he
hadn't done drugs for seven years. Ooops, he later said, make that 25
years. So now we've narrowed it down to anywhere between the time he
was born and 1974, when his father was posted in Beijing and about to
become head of the CIA. That's a long time to be on drugs.

Many supporters are urging him to stop dithering and come clean. But
this is as intolerable a solution as the alternative, which is to
continue to stonewall with a firmness that begins to look less like
stone and more like grape jelly.

We simply cannot have the governor of the state with the world's
largest per capita prison population confessing crimes that would have
landed him in his own pokey. More than 28,000 Texans were arrested on
cocaine charges in 1998, all of whom will now have every right to
claim to juries or parole boards that they will straighten out and run
for governor or president if just given a chance to outlive their mistakes.

Besides, once Bush "confesses," there'll be no end to questions. Who
sold him the stuff? Who'd he use it with? Names? How many times, how
many years? Did his wife know? What's the dumbest thing he did while
on drugs? Did Barbara and big George know? What about his brothers?
Any usage in the Air National Guard? Did he bring it in from Mexico?

The nation has simply wasted too much money incarcerating huge numbers
of nonviolent cocaine users, not to mention harmless recreational
marijuana freaks, ruining their lives, careers or chances to be
president, to now declare a special amnesty for Bush. On the other
hand, Bush, citing his own rehabilitation, is in a better position
than any candidate alive to come out courageously for more treatment
facilities as the sane and humane alternative to jailing nonviolent
drug users.
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Robert Reno Is A Columnist For Newsday.