TACTICALLY, BUSH CANNOT ADMIT TO PAST COCAINE USE

WASHINGTON - "Mr. Bush, now that you've admitted using cocaine some time
ago, the American people want to know why it took you so long to tell the
whole truth. Was it because you hoped, like President Clinton, that you
could get away with clever answers? Didn't your political smarts tell you
that the best thing to do was to put it all out there at once and get it
behind you?

"Mr. Bush, I appreciate the fact that you've owned up to using illegal
drugs. But you haven't said how long you used coke. Was this a one-time use?
Twice? More times than you can remember?

"Could you tell us approximately how many times you snorted - if snorting is
what you did - and over what period of time? The American people would like
to know whether you were just a rebellious youth or an alcohol-swilling
junkie.

"Sir, don't you think it's important to tell the voters with whom you used
them? Was it with other bored, middle-class, white guys? With strangers?
With the sort of people you've been eager to throw into Texas prisons for
similar offenses? After all, the American people want to know if a
presidential candidate used to hang out with lowlife criminals, even in his
youth."

George W. Bush, who still may be the odds-on favorite for the Republican
presidential nomination, is at pains to figure out how to put an end to the
insistent rumors that, along with his admitted alcohol abuse, he also used
cocaine. My guess: He can't.

Already he has said he hasn't used coke for seven years, the period an FBI
screening would cover if he were up for a top federal job. Then he let it be
known that he could have passed muster if the drug use question had been put
to him 25 years ago. He won't, he insists, go beyond that.

If that sounds like a confession (rather than the "stake in the ground" he
keeps talking about), it's a confession that doesn't satisfy the media. Too
much like "I hurt my marriage" or "mistakes were made." Just tell the truth,
reporters - and even some of his supporters - keep urging: It's the only way
to get it behind you.

As the hypothetical questions at the top of this column suggest, it would do
no such thing. It would only change the nature of the interrogation.

"Sir, were the circumstances under which you used cocaine what might be
described as 'sexual'? I mean, are we talking group sex - what some might
call an orgy - or something involving, say, just one other couple? Was it
just with other guys? Don't you remember?"

The endless and awful questions a confession would almost surely trigger
make the present question - Did you ever use cocaine? - sound almost boring.

And if George W. is as smart as he's supposed to be, that's where he'll
leave it. The people are pretty tired of the question already. Why would he
set himself up for new, more interesting questions?

What I'm offering is, of course, unsolicited tactical advice. What of the
more serious question of relevancy? Is it of no consequence that a man who
asks our vote for his presidency once was a user of illegal drugs? Is it
inconsequential because it happened (if we take his stake in the ground as a
confession) 25 years ago? Would it be consequential if it had happened 20
years ago? Fifteen? Five?

I think it matters - but primarily for what it teaches us about the
candidate. If we deduce from his admission of alcohol abuse and his
near-admission of cocaine abuse that he is a reckless personality, one of
the privileged elite who imagines himself exempt from the rules that govern
the rest of us, that's one thing. If we see him as someone who, apparently
quite abruptly, came to himself and turned his life around, that's something
else.

Our impressions, either way, may be the result of the dogged persistence of
the campaign reporters. And for that, the reporters deserve some credit.

But I don't expect further doggedness on the same old question to yield much
additional insight into the candidate - unless, in some forlorn attempt to
put the thing behind him, he pulls up his "stake in the ground" and triggers
a whole new set of questions.

In that case, I'd know this for sure: The man lacks judgment.