BUSH LOOKS FOR SKELETONS IN HIS OWN CLOSET

GEORGE W Bush, the governor of Texas, has hired a private detective to
investigate his own past in an attempt to pre-empt hostile revelations
by the media and political opponents as he prepares to run for president.

Although he has not yet made his political intentions official, Bush,
the eldest son of former United States president George Bush, has
announced that he has set up an "exploratory committee" to prepare his
presidency campaign.

The decision to hire a private detective to comb his past for
unpleasant surprises is key to those preparations. After President
Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, no political party wants a
presidential candidate with secrets.

Whether Bush has secrets he knows about or secrets he may have
forgotten, the detective has been briefed to discover anything which
might derail the Republican oilman's election campaign.

The 52-year-old Bush has admitted to an interesting past. He used to
have a heroic drinking habit, which he gave up forever the day he woke
up in the Broadmore Hotel in Colorado Springs 12 years ago after a
monumental 40th birthday bender. "It wasn't pretty," he said, and it
may explain the need for a third-party investigation to tell him what
he got up to during those drink-hazed days.

Even his father feels the need to put a spin on his eldest boy's
former fondness for the bottle. "He wasn't an alcoholic," he said. "It
is just he knows he cannot hold his liquor." Now the closest George W
gets to a drink is non-alcoholic beer.

Given that he had been married four years before he gave up his
hell-raising ways, are there any Clinton-style bimbo eruptions to
worry about? Adultery is not the issue, he said in a recent interview.
"I've been a loyal husband and a dedicated dad for 21 years."

So what is the big secret? Drink? He dealt with that. Sex? Only of a
pre-marital variety, if one assumes that nobody in their right mind
would hold out such a Clintonesque hostage to fortune by lying about
infidelity. There is talk of a possible photograph of George W dancing
naked on a bar, but it is only talk. And even if it should surface ,
it is unlikely to doom him.

Which leaves just one more issue - drugs. And it is here the waters
turn murky. The dreaded word cocaine has been bandied about, and given
that the people Bush has to avoid upsetting if he is to be his party's
nominee for the presidential election are conservative Christian
Republicans, winning the kind of tolerance shown toward Bill Clinton
by more forgiving Democrats will not be easy.

Did he smoke marijuana and snort cocaine? "When I was young and
irresponsible," he said, "I was young and irresponsible."

Yes, but did he do drugs?

"The question," he says, completely avoiding the question, "is have
you learned from your behaviour? The answer is yes. If I were you, I
wouldn't tell your kids that you smoked pot unless you want them to
smoke pot. I think it's important for leaders and parents not to send
mixed signals. I don't want some kid saying, 'Well Governor Bush tried
it'."

So while Bill Clinton never inhaled, George W clearly did -perhaps he
just never snorted.

Bush's dislike of such intense public scrutiny of his private life has
been blamed for his long-standing indecision regarding his political
ambitions.

With the memory of his father, who left office in 1992, still warm in
the White House, his brother Jeb firmly ensconced as the governor of
Florida, and his own track record in Texas drawing praise from across
the land, why all this hesitation? It is recognition of America's

desire for an ordinary man in the Oval Office -and the fact that the
excessively normal Vice President Al Gore, the inevitable Democratic
candidate, seems perfectly suited to that role - that has given George
W pause for thought.

As long as all of this speculation and investigation is going on
today, while he still has the freedom to beat an elegant retreat, and
so long as the trouble is confined to pre-marital naughtiness, a now-
ended drink habit and maybe a mild flirtation with drugs, then Bush
will have thrown all the skeletons out of his cupboard long before his
opponents even get their fingers on the door handle.

His next challenge will be to create a national version of the concept
of compassionate conservatism that has won him rave reviews from both
sides of the political aisle in Texas and has led to a potent
draft-Bush campaign organised by powerful elements of the Republican
Party. It is a brand of inclusive politics that steers the same kind
of centrist path as Bill Clinton's and Tony Blair's Third Way, yet
sticks to a recognizably conservative fiscal policy. It won him an
unprecedented second term in Texas, by a landslide, and makes him the
outright hot favourite for the Republican nomination for 2000.

Bush's closest challenger, Elizabeth Dole, is due to announce her own
exploratory committee this week. On the assumption that he runs, and
beats her in the primaries, smart money says he will pick her as his
running mate to create a formidable challenge to Al Gore, and possibly
put a Bush in the White House only eight years after the last one left.