BUSH RETREATS OVER COCAINE ALLEGATIONS

THE Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, yesterday indicated that he had not
taken illegal drugs at any time since 1974, in his most specific answer yet
to a question that has dogged his presidential campaign.

At an impromptu press conference in Virginia, the front-runner for the
Republican presidential nomination declared that he could have passed the
standard FBI background check for drugs when his father was in the White
House.

The elder George Bush became president in January 1989, when the FBI
background checks on White House staff stretched back 15 years rather than
the current seven-year inquiry period. In 1974 George W. Bush was 28 years
old.

"Not only could I have passed in today's White House, I could have passed
the standards applied under the most stringent conditions when my dad was
president, a 15-year period," Mr Bush said. "Over 20 years ago, I did some
things...I made some mistakes and I learned from those. That's all I intend
to talk about."

Mr Bush, 53, still declined to discuss whether he had taken drugs in his
20s, and his partial response may not be sufficient to defuse an issue that
has come to overshadow his campaign, to the mounting frustration of the
candidate.

After touring a youth centre where he advised one child that "drugs are not
cool", Mr Bush was heckled by a protestor in the street who shouted: "Just
answer the question. Did you do it? Don't feed the frenzy, just answer the
question." At a routine press conference on education in Austin on
Wednesday, a reporter again asked whether he had taken cocaine and Mr Bush
snapped: "You know what happens, somebody floats a rumour and it causes you
to ask a question. That's the game in American politics and I refuse to
play it."

Asked if he believed that the rumours of drug use were being spread as a
political ploy, Mr Bush became still more testy: "Do I think they are being
planted? I know they are being planted and they are ridiculous and they're
absurd and the people of America are sick and tired of this kind of
politics and I am not participating." He then turned away and answered a
different question as another reporter attempted to follow up.

However, the press is far from tired of an issue that has made the first
significant dent in the aura of invincibility surrounding Mr Bush. The
Republican Governor's stock answer to the drug question - "When I was young
and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible" - has grown thin from
over-use and Mr Bush's rivals have now begun to stoke the fire in earnest.

Gary Bauer, the conservative Republican who came fourth in the Iowa straw
poll won by Mr Bush last weekend, was the first rival to twist the knife by
calling on the pace-setter to come clean. All the candidates except Mr Bush
have stated publicly that they have never taken cocaine.

No evidence has been produced to substantiate the rumours, and the issue is
being propelled more by Mr Bush's defensive posture than anything
approaching proof.

Mr Bush has danced around the question ever since his first run for
Governor but the dance-steps have changed subtly since 1994.

The latest strategy has shifted again, by defining his refusal to be
specific as a defence of personal privacy and a rejection of what he calls
"trash-mouth politics" and plotted rumour-mongering by his enemies. Yet
that stance conflicts with his willingness to talk about other, more
laudable, aspects of his past private life, such as his decision to give up
alcohol and his faithful relationship with his wife throughout their
20-year marriage.