THE QUESTION IS: WHAT DID BUSH LEARN?

AUSTIN, Texas - Watching the political press corps try to figure out what to
do about George W. Bush's supposed cocaine use is a walking test case in
media ethics that will be used in journalism schools for the next 50 years.
You probably didn't know there were courses in media ethics. You may now
make up your own joke.

For starters, under the old rules, before we wrote about something we were
expected to have some evidence that it was true. Under the new rules, the
fact that there is gossip about someone is news, whether the gossip is true
or not. In this case, the fact that Bush refuses to deny that he used
cocaine has seemed to the entire press corps sufficient evidence -- a
charming latter-day version of "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

To add insult to injury, the Washington media -- whose provincialism knows
no bounds -- is busy analyzing the Bush campaign's response, deciding that
it was insufficiently nimble for the big leagues, that he didn't stay "on
message" (a mortal sin) and otherwise picking apart his campaign operation.

The week before, they had of course been praising said operation as flawless
and awesome. Now "Bush himself is responsible for the current flurry ..."
Oh, sure. This is my favorite media trick: We do something disgusting and
then blame it on the person to whom it was done.

The media, as happens so depressingly often, are asking the wrong question.
Bush himself stands there and begs us to ask it. "I have learned from my
mistakes," he says over and over. The question is: What did he learn?

Until 1973, Texas had the most draconian drug laws in the nation. Whether
they stopped Bush or not, they didn't stop me, didn't stop people now
serving in the Legislature and didn't stop most of a generation of Texans
from trying marijuana. What did he learn from that? Nothing.

Harsh laws do not stop young people from trying illegal drugs. So what does
Bush do when he gets to be governor? Increases the penalties and toughens
the system so it's harder on young people. Signs a memorably stupid bill
making possession of less than a 20th of an ounce of cocaine punishable by
jail time.

Are there people who are now in Texas prisons for making "youthful
mistakes"? There are thousands of them. Based on a combination of Texas
Department of Criminal Justice figures and U.S. Justice Department figures,
there are at least 5,000 people in Texas prisons for marijuana possession
alone. (The numbers are extremely difficult to pin down, since many of those
in for possession probably pleaded down from other charges; this is a
conservative estimate.) Twenty percent of the Texas prison population of
147,000 is there on drug-related charges.

The truth is, if Bush had been caught using marijuana or cocaine 25 years
ago, he would not have been sentenced to prison --he was rich and white, and
his daddy was an important guy. That's the way the system worked then;
that's the way the system works now. Lee Otis Johnson, the black political
activist from Houston, got 30 years for marijuana; white boys walked. Bush
was there; he saw it happen; what did he learn?

When he became governor, he had a world of opportunity to try to make the
system more fair. What did he do? He vetoed Sen. Rodney Ellis' bill (passed
unanimously by the Republican-controlled Senate and by the House), which
would have given poor defendants the right to see a lawyer within 20 days.
Twenty days, big deal -- in most of the country, an indigent defendant gets
a lawyer within 72 hours or they have to let him go. We have poor people who
spend months in jail just waiting to see a lawyer, who may be drunk, or
incompetent, or just sleep through his trial.

Bush vetoed that bill. He learned nothing.

When Bush came in as governor, this state had committed to the most
extensive in-prison drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation program in the country
- -- the joint legacy of Ann Richards and Bob Bullock, both recovering
alcoholics. Eighty percent of the people in Texas prisons are diagnosed by
the system as having substance-abuse problems. The entire program is gone
now, completely repealed.

Bush learned nothing. That's the story.