POLITICAL PUFFERY AT ITS BEST

I FEAR WE may have yesterday witnessed the most astonishing boxscore
ever to hit newsprint.

I am speaking, of course, of the accounting by Ontario's three main
political leaders of every puff, or lack thereof, of marijuana they
ever took.

Just what are we to make of the admission by Liberal Leader Dalton
McGuinty that he tried pot twice in high school, or by NDP Leader
Howard Hampton that he smoked a bit in university, or by Premier Mike
Harris that his preferred mood alterer was alcohol?

Are we to conclude that one or the other demonstrates greater clarity
of purpose, certainty of values, strength of character or respect for
the law?

Not likely.

As to scofflaw-ism, what reporters might have asked the Premier after
his announcement that ``I found booze a little more attractive'' was
whether he ever drove drunk. He would be a rare bird, given his
generation, if the answer were no.

Let us say only that vastly more carnage has resulted from abuse of
alcohol than from pot. The only thing generally assaulted after a
gathering of potheads might be a lemon meringue pie.

As to values and purpose, it's hard to see how hanging around North
Bay strip bars drinking draught and watching peelers is much more
character-building than a toke in the park.

Odds are the different drug of choice was simply a function of the
Premier being a little older than McGuinty and Hampton and a little
scared of his late father.

``Mike had a very dominant father,'' a boyhood friend told author John
Ibbitson in his book Promised Land. ``We were all a little bit afraid
of him.''

As for the twin descents into reefer madness of the notoriously
clean-cut McGuinty, it hardly seems to have nudged him off the
straight and narrow. Compared to the Premier, he was a model of
get-up-and-get. Law school. Married high-school sweetheart at 25.
Immediately to work filling the nest with a family that looks to have
walked out of a Gap catalogue. Succeeds father as MPP.

Likewise for Hampton, who despite his crazed past seems to have
managed law school, a hockey scholarship and a life of fairly steady
accomplishment.

Oddly, it was the Premier's youth, of the three, that seemed most
marked by aimlessness. Like many of us, he stumbled out of the gate -
with a failed stab at university, a failed first marriage, an aborted
teaching career before going to work for his dad.

In fact, one of his more annoying habits is the incessant trumpeting,
despite such a modest c.v., of his credentials as a small businessman.
He was at it again during yesterday's dope-off.

Maybe McGuinty's support for more lenient penalties for simple
possession comes, he sniffed, ``from being a former defence lawyer
versus a small businessman.''

Please. It was his dad's business. The Premier's proficiency at golf
and skiing is hardly evidence of an overworked youth. And, in any
event, he was comfortably fastened on the public teat by 36.

All in all, I doubt we're any the wiser for the mass confessional. I'm
not even convinced McGuinty wasn't padding his pot-smoking a bit just
to appear less priggish.

And as for the Premier, well, we already know his flashbacks to
younger days are occasionally hallucinatory. Not so long ago, during
debate over what kind of diet could be had on reduced welfare rates,
the Premier claimed that during the lean years of his youth he had
eaten his share of bologna.

Strangely, neither his first wife or father - who were providing his
meals back then - could recall him enduring such modest fare.

Maybe someone should listen to that tape again. Maybe he didn't say
bologna.

Maybe he said brownies.