BUSH DODGES AS ADDICTS ROT IN JAIL

Joe Conason Wonders Why The President Is Punishing Drug Users For
Offences He Has Also Been Linked To

On the audiotapes of George W. Bush recorded secretly by his erstwhile
confidant Douglas Wead in 1999, the future president revealed how much
he feared candid discussion of his personal use of marijuana and
cocaine. As quoted in The New York Times, Bush vowed that no matter
what rumours and facts circulated about what he did or might have
done, he would doggedly decline to answer forthrightly.

His natural urge to protect his privacy evokes sympathy, however
quaint his expectations might be at this point in our political
history. But in justifying his refusal to talk about his foolish
youth, he appealed to a higher purpose. "I wouldn't answer the
marijuana questions," he told Wead. "You know why? Because I don't
want some little kid doing what I tried."

For many American parents of a certain age, that self-serving yet
poignant response must strike an empathetic chord. Concern that
children will mimic parental misbehaviour is universal, and so is the
impulse to conceal embarrassing truths. Bush rightly worries that
children imitate adult models in the belief that they, too, can escape
the consequences.

When Bush uttered those words, he was in his second term as governor
of Texas and on his way to the White House. After all, if he could
drink too much, smoke those forbidden herbs and perhaps even snort
illegal powders and nevertheless become a successful politician, then
"some little kid" might reasonably assume he or she could sin likewise
without undue risk.

Any such assumption would be terribly mistaken, of course, unless the
kid happened to belong to a wealthy and well-connected family like the
Bush clan.

Prisons and jails across America are crowded with non-violent drug
offenders whose lives have been ruined -- and whose families have been
damaged or destroyed -- by the same punitive legal system that never
touched young "Georgie," except to issue him a drunk-driving summons.

The poor and the black are incarcerated for using pot and coke, while
the rich and the white lie to their kids (and occasionally to the
voters) about those same transgressions.

Certainly that was how the justice system worked when Bush and Wead
had their candid chats. The Texas politician couldn't reassure his
friend that he hadn't used cocaine, let alone marijuana, but as
governor he was imprisoning young people unlucky enough to be arrested
in possession of those narcotics, often for draconian
mandatory-minimum sentences. He always cherished his image as a tough,
swaggering, law-and-order politician who didn't hesitate to imprison
teenagers. But that isn't what happens to people from good families.

His niece Noelle Bush went through a drug-rehab program and was
released two years ago. His friend Rush Limbaugh went through rehab
and has returned to berating the less fortunate on the radio, without
doing one day of time.

The lopsided cruelty has only escalated since Bush entered the White
House. Federal agents have cracked down on medical users of marijuana,
depriving them of a substance that eases their sickness and keeps them
alive.

The human and economic costs of the drug war continue to swell. So
burdensome are those costs that many conservatives, including such
Bush tutors as former secretary of state George Shultz, have publicly
pleaded for saner policies.

Despite his claims to be a "compassionate conservative," Bush has
ignored those pleas. He seems to feel that if he overcame his
substance-abuse problem, then nobody else really has an excuse.

No reporter ever asked the Texas governor why all those other people
deserved to serve five or 10 or 20 years in prison, when their crimes
were no different from what everyone knew he had done, whether he
admitted it or not.

No reporter will ask the president that question today, either,
although it is just as pertinent in light of his revealing
conversations with Wead.

Indeed, Bush not only avoided public responsibility for his own past
mistakes but found a clever way to turn those wayward years to
political advantage. He brandishes his late return to sobriety as a
symbol of his Christian faith.

It is hard to tell what Bush learned in his recovery from sin, except
that other people got caught and he didn't.

That would be enough to make anybody smirk.