BUSH CAN PROVE HIS COMPASSION

At last, a campaign issue everyone agrees on--George W. blew it. And, no,
we're not talking about some long-gone Peruvian powder he might or might not
have inhaled in his youth. We're referring to his woeful mishandling of the
cocaine question. It's not just what he wouldn't say, but the way he
wouldn't say it.

Bush started by digging an impenetrable Maginot Line in front of rumors
about his drug use. But it didn't take too much press persistence before he
sounded retreat faster than Cpl. Agarn on "F-Troop," lobbing lame,
Clintonesque evasions as he scrambled for cover. He swore he had not used
drugs for seven, no, 15, no, make that 25 years--but wouldn't go farther
than that. (Man, that must have been some 28th birthday party!)

And while admitting to having "made some mistakes" and learned from any
mistakes he "may or may not have made," Bush failed to recognize his biggest
mistake of all: fumbling his chance to be the first politician in the
post-bimbo-eruption era to take the principled position that his private
life is just that--and mean it.

But all is not lost. In fact, the governor has the chance to dramatically
alter the dynamics of campaign 2000 by seizing the moment and turning a
personal negative into a positive act of political courage and moral leadership.

The important drug question is not "What did George sniff, and when did he
sniff it?" It is "How do we handle the legion of nonviolent drug offenders
who are now crowding our prisons?" This long-overdue discussion has become
an electrified third rail of American politics--a subject neither party has
been willing to touch for fear of being incinerated on contact. Bush can
change that by redirecting the media spotlight off the issue of his past
substance abuse and on to an issue of actual substance--namely, the racial
and economic injustice of our present drug policy.

In the name of toughness in the drug war, mandatory federal sentences of
five years are meted out to anyone caught with more than five grams of crack
cocaine. For the same sentence, you would need to possess 500 grams of the
more upscale powder form of the drug. The result has been a two-tiered
sentencing system, disproportionately affecting African-American men, who
are five times as likely to be arrested for drug violations than white men,
even though their rate of illegal drug use is about the same. Despite a
decline in violent crime, a record 1.82 million inmates are now in our state
and federal prisons. And of all federal prisoners, 60 percent are there for
violating drug laws.

"Bush should take a compassionate look," the Rev. Jesse Jackson told me, "at
the thousands of young Americans paying the price in our jails for a mistake
that--if he made it--did not mar his life." Jackson, for one, intends to use
this moment to spotlight the horrors of the "jail-industrial complex, which
is driven by the incarceration of nonviolent drug users."

There are many conservative voices calling for mandatory minimum sentencing
to be repealed or at least re-examined--including Supreme Court Justice
Anthony Kennedy, criminologist John DiIulio and former Attorney General
Edwin Meese.

"The different sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine is something
that there's no doubt needs to be addressed," Dan Bartlett, Bush's campaign
spokesman, told me from Austin. "We do not have mandatory sentencing down
here because we don't want to handcuff judges." But by signing legislation
in 1997 that made it possible for judges to send to jail even first-time
nonviolent offenders carrying less than one gram of cocaine, Bush has opened
himself to charges of a double standard--if, that is, he ends up admitting
that the youthful mistakes he has alluded to include being in possession of
less than one gram of cocaine.

It would be a truly defining moment if Bush were to use any personal
confession he might make not only to express his regret but to decry our
present drug policy that makes second chances and learning from one's
mistakes nearly impossible. Now is the time for Bush to prove his
compassionate conservatism. Compassion literally means "to suffer with."
Here is his chance to show that he has suffered with the 70 million
Americans who drug czar Barry McCaffrey says have tried illegal drugs--and
that Bush believes in their ability to turn their lives around, just as he
clearly has.

If he chooses instead to stand behind the "zero tolerance" of our
$18-billion-a-year war on drugs--which is looking more and more like a
domestic Vietnam--and continues to advocate harsh sentences for first-time
nonviolent offenders, then he will expose himself as the worst kind of
hypocrite, forfeiting any claim of moral superiority over the man he seeks
to succeed.

E-mail: arianna@ariannaonlin e.com