BUSH'S DRUG FLAP SHOWS HOW CLINTON CHANGED THE CAMPAIGN GAME

WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, the kind of turbulence that hit Governor
George W. Bush's campaign last week might have threatened to knock a
candidate out of the presidential race. For better or worse, President
Bill Clinton has changed the rules.

Mr. Bush's high-flying campaign was brought to earth over the question
of whether he has ever used illegal drugs, and even some supporters
believe he will be hurt by the week's events. Whether the damage is
serious or longlasting was not clear Friday, and the Texas governor
quickly shifted back to his pie-turbulence posture of vowing not to
answer questions on the issue.

The episode revealed a campaign that, however smoothly it was
operating, could be knocked off stride by one ingenious and
unanticipated question. But it also showed how a decade of scandal
politics -- with the example of Mr. Clinton -- has taught politicians
not to crumble when the first crisis hits a campaign.

There once was a familiar pattern when political scandal erupted: the
media feeding frenzy, the campaign deathwatch and the inevitable scene
in a hotel ballroom where a contrite or defiant candidate withdrew
from the race. That was the way it played out in 1987 when Gary Hart
was hit with allegations of marital infidelity.

But after a 1992 campaign in which Mr. Clinton weathered questions
about infidelity, the draft and smoking marijuana, and then the past
year in which he survived the Monica Lewinsky scandal, that old
pattern has been replaced by something new.

"You can keep your head down and plow through it," said the Republican
strategist Ralph Reed, a Bush adviser, "and after you have, you're a
stronger candidate because people see you're not going to be knocked
out by it."

Mr. Bush took a calculated risk by reopening the issue of when, if
ever, he has used drugs. It is that the public will forgive mistakes
of the distant past if they are convinced a politician has learned
from them -- and will not repeat them.

"I think that ultimately voters will have a sense that the governor
has admitted to mistakes that were made in his youth and that they
will fall into two camps," a Bush adviser said. "Either they respect
that position or they disagree with it, in which case they'll find
another candidate. And we feel far more will agree than disagree."

A poll for CNN and Time magazine by Yankelovich Partners released
Friday offers some reassurance to campaign officials that the risk is
worth taking. Eighty-four percent of the "poll's respondents said that
if Mr. Bush used cocaine in his 20s it should not disqualify him from
the presidency.

Mr. Bush also hopes to benefit from a public backlash against the
press. "From everything we've seen, people are fairly fed up with the
notion of how reporters go after this stuff and the prying into public
lives," one Bush adviser said. The poll for CNN and Time underscored
that view. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said reporters should
not be asking Mr. Bush about cocaine use.

But Mr. Bush also has gambled that he can partly answer the question
without definitively saying he did or did not use drugs. What he did
last week was effectively to deny having used drugs since 1974 (when
he was 28) but then to refuse to say whether he used them earlier in
his life.

The danger is that, after a Clinton presidency replete with evasive
answers to simple questions, Mr. Bush has created the impression with
voters that he is being cute or coy rather than forthcoming.
Ultimately, say some political analysts, Mr. Bush may be forced to
offer a clear-cut answer to the drug question.

"I think being forthright is the key to this," one Republican
strategist said. "I don't think America expects you to be a saint;
They do expect you to shoot straight with thern." Bush campaign
officials say their candidate is taking a much different gamble by
refusing to answer detailed questions about his past. Voters may
assume he engaged in behavior that never occurred. But, they say, Mr.
Bush feels strongly that he must draw the line on personal questions
to help change the climate of politics.

"We have to accept the fact that people may make mistaken
assumptions," one adviser said. "But the governor has a principle,
which is the rationale for this answer. He's not going to bend his
principles. He strongly believes. and this is something strongly
supported by sociological and psychological research, that baby
boomers should not detail their mistakes to their children."

Last week's furor over Mr. Bush and drugs marked the first real test
of his campaign under stress. It happened unexpectedly.

On Wednesday, Mr. Bush had been peppered with questions from Texas
reporters about why he would not respond to repeated questions about
drug use. Mr. Bush, in forceful terms, accused reporters of succumbing
to the "game" of forcing politicians to disprove unfounded rumors.
Later in New Orleans, a Dallas Morning News reporter, Sam Attlesey,
told a campaign official he wanted to ask Mr. Bush a question
privately. The question was whether Mr. Bush would insist that
appointees to a Bush administration be required to answer standard FBI
background questions about drug use, and could he meet that standard
himself.

Mr. Bush concluded it was a legitimate question that demanded an
answer. He later told the Dallas paper he understood the question to
be whether someone had used drugs within the last seven years. "I will
be glad to answer that question and the answer is no," Mr. Bush said.

Over the next 18 hours, Mr. Bush's advisers were in constant
communication on the phone and through e-mail as they scrambled to
respond to a story that was spiraling away from them.

Later that day, as Mr. Bush and his campaign team moved from Louisiana
to Virginia, they reviewed what had happened and quickly anticipated
that the next morning the candidate would be asked whether he could
meet the more stringent standards used during his father's
administration, which rejected applicants for top jobs who had used
drugs during the previous 15 years.

The next morning, the need to clarify his response to the Morning News
became even more apparent. "Once we saw the Morning News story, we
realized it left the impression that it could be as recent as seven
years," an adviser said.

That could create the impression that Mr. Bush had used drugs well
into his 40s, which would undermine his declaration that he had
learned from the mistakes of his youth. So Mr. Bush told reporters
Thursday morning that he could have passed the 15-year test at the
time his father's administration began in 1989. By the end of the day,
Mr. Bush once again had closed the door on further questions about
drugs, a stance his advisers say he is determined to maintain.