BUSH TAKES RICHARDS' TACK ON DRUG QUESTION

He Won't Say Whether He Has Used Cocaine, Criticizes 'that Kind Of Politics'

By Sam Attlesey / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN - When it comes to politics, Ann Richards and George W. Bush
often disagree. But in handling questions about their personal lives,
the one-time rivals for governor have adopted the same approach.

Both openly talk about their problems with alcohol. Ms. Richards said
she was addicted and got treatment. Mr. Bush has said that he drank
too much beer and bourbon until he quit after his 40th birthday.

Now, in his presidential bid, Mr. Bush is following the same strategy
Ms. Richards used in her first race for governor in dealing with
drug-use questions.

Just as she did in 1990, Mr. Bush, the Republican front-runner, won't
say whether he has ever tried cocaine or other illicit drugs.

Although there's no evidence that the Texas governor was a cocaine
user, his refusal to answer the question has been campaign fodder - at
least among the media and some national Democrats and
Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said it's a "legitimate
question" and suggested that reporters were giving Mr. Bush a break by
not pressing him on the subject.

GOP rival Gary Bauer said, "I think it would be wrong for any possible
Republican presidential nominee to refuse to say clearly and
distinctly that they've not used drugs."

Eleven of the presidential candidates, responding to a New York Daily
News inquiry this month, denied having used cocaine. Mr. Bush was the
only candidate who would not say.

The question came up again on weekend talk shows after Mr. Bush won
the Iowa Republican straw poll, and it has driven monologues by
late-night comedians David Letterman and Jay Leno.

Despite that, Mr. Bush says he does not feel compelled to answer.
"There's no pressure to talk about rumors, unsubstantiated rumors and
gossip," he said. "I reject that kind of politics. America rejects
that kind of politics."

Mr. Bush, 53, has said he made mistakes and sometimes acted
irresponsibly as a youth. He won't give specifics, saying, "I'm not
going to inventory what I did as a child."

Saturday, CNN's Rowland Evans told Mr. Bush that "there are and have
been rumors, lots of them, of your possible past use of hard drugs."
He asked the governor if it is "now in your interest to tell us flatly
if these rumors are or are not true?"

'Enough is enough'

Mr. Bush said: "It's time for some politician to stand up and say
enough is enough of this. The game of trying to force me to prove a
negative and to chase down unsubstantiated, ugly rumors has got to
end. And so therefore, I'm going to end it."

He said that "the minute you answer one question, they float another
rumor. I know how the game works. I saw it firsthand. And I'm not playing."

In seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1990, Ms.
Richards dealt with the question in a similar way.

Her primary challengers, Jim Mattox and Mark White, repeatedly urged
her to answer directly whether she had ever used illegal drugs. She
refused to do so.

"I have revealed more about my personal life, including my alcoholism,
than any other candidate that has ever run," she said during a
televised debate with her Democratic foes.

"By continuing to raise those questions, I think that we are sending a
very sad message to a lot of people who see that if they seek
treatment, they will forever bear the stigma of their addiction," she
said.

Ms. Richards was forced into a runoff with Mr. Mattox and won the
nomination, going on to defeat Republican Clayton Williams in the
general election.

'Tough fight'

Austin consultant Glenn Smith, who was Ms. Richards' campaign manager
in the 1990 primary, said the question hurt her. "She would have won
the nomination going away without the question. Instead, it was a
tough fight.

"As a personal strategy, it was a good way for her to go, to go ahead
and draw a line and say: No matter the consequences, nobody is going
past here," he said.

"But as a political strategy, it's a tough one. Bush's situation could
be similar."

Another former Richards aide, Austin consultant Chuck McDonald, said
he thought that she and Mr. Bush gave the proper responses.

"There is no good answer to something like this," said Mr. McDonald,
who was Ms. Richards' press secretary when she lost to Mr. Bush in
1994.

"But if you ever allow yourself to say, 'I have to talk about this
specific allegation,' well, then the next week it's a question about
marijuana or did you ever drive under the influence or hang around
people that did," he said.

"There's no end to the questions, so there's no need to play the
game."

Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas at
Austin, said Mr. Bush's position does not appear to have upset voters.

Though his refusal to answer has generated "some adverse stories, he's
getting away with it," Mr. Buchanan said. "It seems to be a
journalists' preoccupation right now, and the public has not focused
on the race yet."

His Republican challengers have all answered the question. They differ
on whether Mr. Bush should answer.

Mr. Bauer is the most vocal in saying that Mr. Bush should answer.
Lamar Alexander, before he dropped out of the GOP race, called it a
"simple question that all the candidates should answer." John McCain,
Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Dole said it's up to Mr. Bush to make that
decision.

In a Fox News national poll last week, more than two-thirds of
registered voters said they wanted to know whether a candidate had
used cocaine before they decided whom to support. About the same
number said they would forgive candidates if drugs were used only
during their 20s or 30s.

Bill McInturff, a McCain pollster, said voters probably would overlook
a youthful indiscretion unless "it's connected to something about that
person that would affect their current performance."

Some politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore, have acknowledged
past marijuana use. President Clinton said he tried pot as a student
while in Britain but didn't inhale.

No evidence

During Mr. Bush's failed run for Congress in 1978 and both his
gubernatorial campaigns, no one offered evidence that he had used
illegal drugs. And people who have known him over the years have said
that he never did so.

As an undergraduate at Yale from 1964 to 1968, the future governor was
a hard-drinking frat leader, but illegal drugs hadn't come into vogue,
classmates said.

"There weren't any drugs around - not at Yale, at least. That was
after our time," said Gregory Gallico, a Delta Kappa Epsilon
fraternity brother who now teaches medicine at Harvard.

From Yale, Mr. Bush went into the Texas Air National Guard, where he
trained as a pilot and regularly flew fighter jets out of Houston.

That circumstance - as well as his father's political profile - would
have made it especially risky for him to use drugs in those days,
friends said.

They recall Mr. Bush's taste for a tamer intoxicant popular among his
friends: beer.

"This talk of cocaine is so pathetic," said Diane Paul, a Los Angeles
lawyer who dated Mr. Bush for about two years in Houston. "Nobody
could be straighter than George W."

From Houston, Mr. Bush went to Harvard Business School in 1973, where,
classmates said, drugs weren't a big part of the scene.

"It was a pretty conservative group of future capitalists," said David
W. Coit, a Maine venture capitalist who was in Mr. Bush's 70-student
section.

After getting his master of business administration degree in 1975,
Mr. Bush went into the oil business in Midland.

"We always had Budweisers around. We called them 'red and whites,' "
said entertainment producer Dennis Grubb. He said his longtime
friend's reputation as a party animal has been exaggerated.

"I've seen guys who were wild. He was nothing like that," Mr. Grubb
said, recalling Mr. Bush's main social interests: the buffet table and
the clock.

"He was always first in line to eat, even ahead of the women, and
first in line for dessert," he said. "And the first to leave."

Staff writers Pete Slover and George Kuempel in Austin, Kathy Lewis in
Washington and Arnold Hamilton in Oklahoma City contributed to this
report.