BILL BENNETT SQUANDERED A 'TEACHABLE MOMENT'

William Bennett has done a world of good in his career, preaching the
importance of traditional morality in our increasingly "anything-goes" culture.

The former Reagan secretary of education and the first President Bush's
drug czar became a best-selling author in 1993 with "The Book of Virtues,"
an anthology of stories, folk tales and poems that taught the importance of
honesty, courage, loyalty, self-discipline, work and other homey virtues.

Now Bennett finds himself the object of some derision after reporters
Jonathan Alter and Joshua Green revealed that Bennett is a problem gambler
who has lost millions at casinos over the last decade. Is Bennett finished
as the nation's unofficial morality maven? I hope not, for our sake as much
as his.

Bennett's first response to press reports of his high roller activities was
uncharacteristically blase. "I play fairly high stakes. I adhere to the
law. I don't play the 'milk money.' I don't put my family at risk, and I
don't owe anyone anything," he said when confronted with the allegation
that he had a gambling problem.

It was the kind of statement Bennett would have excoriated had it come from
anyone else. Just three weeks ago, Bennett reportedly lost over $500,000 at
the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, and last July, he lost $340,000 at an
Atlantic City, N.J., casino, according to Green-not exactly "the milk
money" but appalling behavior nonetheless.

After two days of increasingly negative news stories, Bennett issued a
statement saying: "It is true that I have gambled large sums of money. I
have also complied with all laws on reporting wins and losses.
Nevertheless, I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I
wish to set. My gambling days are over."

I wish he had said more. This was-in one of Bennett's favorite
expressions-a "teachable moment." He had the opportunity to help others by
revealing his own struggles to overcome destructive personal behavior.
Instead he chose to treat gambling as if it were akin to talking with his
mouth full, a bad habit he could quit anytime he chooses.

Even if Bill Bennett is not a compulsive gambler, as his wife insisted in
an interview with USA Today this week, he surely knows that gambling is at
odds with the virtues he has so passionately espoused. Throughout his
public life, Bennett has taught us to extol responsibility and hard work
and to reject luck and chance as paths to success.

Gambling is a national problem. According to a 1997 Harvard Medical School
study, some 7.5 million American adults are problem or pathological
gamblers, as are 7.9 million adolescents. Americans spend an estimated $64
billion each year betting on everything from illegal cockfights to
state-run lotteries. While some of this money is spent relatively
innocently-bingo night at the fire hall, with small stakes all going to
charity, a friendly game of cards with friends or a couple of bucks in the
office's sports pool-much of gambling is unsavory business.

A few years ago, I visited a casino at an Indian reservation where I was
vacationing. I was shocked to see so many elderly men and women-many of
them obviously destitute-using credit cards to play slot machines with
zombie-like fixation. Bill Bennett may have millions in discretionary
income to waste on slot machines, but most people who gamble regularly
don't. When I sat on the board of directors of a bus company a few years
ago, I learned the busiest days for excursions to Las Vegas and Atlantic
City were the days of the month when Social Security and welfare checks
arrived in the mail.

"There is much unhappiness and personal distress in the world because of
failures to control tempers, appetites, passions and impulses," Bennett
writes in "The Book of Virtues." "'Oh, if only I had stopped myself,' is an
all too familiar refrain," he says. No doubt he's feeling the sting of
those words himself these days.

But the prodigal Bill Bennett still has much to teach us about virtue, with
the help of one virtue mysteriously missing from the chapter headings in
his earlier tome: Humility.