BUSH AND COKE

If George W. did it, should he tell?

Rumors are circulating faster than tumbleweeds in a west Texas wind
storm that in his youth George W. Bush used cocaine. He won't answer
questions about it. Should he?

Mr. Bush, the governor of Texas and early front-runner for the
Republican presidential nomination, acknowledges that he was a wild
one before he got married and got religion. But he won't talk in
detail about his wildness. He accuses his political enemies of
spreading nasty rumors about him, which, if it isn't true already, no
doubt will be.

Surely there's a statute of limitations on youthful stupidity, so Gov.
Bush has some justification for saying he did things he shouldn't have
done but refusing to dredge up his past to satisfy anybody's
curiosity. That may be politically costly if people assume the worst
about his youthful actions. Or maybe the worst that people assume
isn't as bad as what he did. Only Gov. Bush can make that political
calculation, and apparently he has made it.

There's another consideration, however, that Gov. Bush and his
supporters should keep in mind. Nobody's life is more closely
examined, over time, than a president's. Things that have been kept
secret for years have a way of oozing out when reporters and scholars
and political scandal mongers start digging into a president's past.
Just ask Bill Clinton.

The problem with secrets too damaging to tell is that usually someone
else knows them. If Gov. Bush doesn't want them revealed, then those
who know them have some power over him. If the secrets involve, for
example, buying and using hard drugs, who knows who those people may
be?

People who ask Gov. Bush about his past aren't necessarily doing so
out of idle curiosity. What the voters don't know might be something
that could hurt the country. Who knows?