MEDIA GET MIXED SIGNALS ON FAMILY PRIVACY

The normally strait-laced Associated Press did something very cheeky when
President Bush announced his new drug-control policy last week.

In an otherwise innocuous report on the announcement -- a drug-use
reduction target, a $19.2 billion budget -- the wire service noted: "The
war on drugs has touched the Bush family. Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush, has been admitted to a drug treatment program after being
arrested Jan. 29 on charges of trying to buy Xanax with a fraudulent
prescription."

Uh-oh. In the Bush White House, this challenged a sacred presidential
principle: the sphere of family privacy.

Last year, when the Houston Chronicle's Bennett Roth asked about daughter
Jenna Bush's underage drinking citation after the president discussed the
importance of parental involvement, White House press secretary Ari
Fleischer telephoned the reporter to say, ominously, that the question had
been "noted in the building."

At the start of his term, Bush issued a warning in a televised interview.
"I am going to be angry at people mistreating my girls in the public
arena," he said. "I'm fair game. And [first lady] Laura's semi-fair game.
But the girls aren't."

Yet an examination of the public uses of the Bush family by the White House
indicates a more flexible approach.

On the eve of congressional probes into the collapse of Enron Corp., which
was a major contributor to Bush over the years, Bush announced that his
family, too, was victimized by the bankruptcy. "My own mother-in-law bought
stock last summer, and it's not worth anything now," the president said.

But when other questions were raised -- about other Bush family members'
Enron holdings or involvement in Enron's lucrative partnerships -- the
White House was not forthcoming. "I don't know," Fleischer said when asked,
directing people to financial disclosure laws that don't apply for most Bushes.

Similarly, Bush and his aides did not hesitate to put his children in the
national spotlight during the 2000 campaign when news surfaced of Bush's
long ago drunk-driving arrest. Why had he not disclosed it? "The governor
has twin daughters who were at a very impressionable age," aide Karen
Hughes said. "He made a decision as a father that he did not want to set
that bad example for his daughters."

But while invoking his daughters to defuse a controversy, Bush and his
aides took a different approach when the twins themselves were cited for
underage drinking at an Austin bar. Fleischer said questions about the
president's sentiments were, this time, out of bounds. "I would urge you to
be very careful because any reaction of the parents is parental," he said.
"It is not governmental. It is family. It's private."

Asked yesterday to explain the distinction between what the public should
know about the Bush family and what invades privacy, White House spokesman
Scott Stanzel declined, saying Bush "in general" urges respect for his
daughters' privacy.

Stuart Stevens, an advertising consultant to Bush's campaign, said the
increasing tendency of politicians to talk about their family life has
created an "inevitable trend" toward less privacy. Still, he said, Bush has
"found a very comfortable middle ground that places the family above all else."

The White House view of family privacy defies easy categorization. For
reasons unclear, Fleischer refused to disclose what the first family ate
for Thanksgiving dinner. (Word eventually leaked that they ate turkey,
sweet potato puree, green beans and pumpkin pie.) But Fleischer did not
hesitate to mention that the first lady sent the president a Valentine's
Day cookie hanging from the collar of their dog Barney.

The White House also proved prickly on the question of whether Bush had
spoken with his father, a China expert, during the standoff with China over
a U.S. surveillance plane last year. "The president has asked me to keep
any conversations he has with his father privileged, private," Fleischer said.

At other times, Bush has spoken of his family in a less-than-flattering
light. In Orlando in December, Bush cracked: "I did eat with my family --
so long as my mom wasn't cooking." Then there was the black-tie dinner
where Bush flashed an indecent photo of the Florida governor as a baby. Jeb
Bush retaliated at a stadium in Tampa by showing a baby-carriage photo of
the future president's bottom.

Bush routinely uses speeches to praise his wife ("I married above myself"),
his mother ("Always listen to your mother") and his brother ("I always
enjoy coming to states which have a great governor"). Those are easy calls.
But what about family actions in the gray area of the public's need to know?

Exhibit A: The president's mother went to Rio last week for Carnival, a
two-day parade in which sequined and body-painted dancers wearing very
little clothing writhe to a provocative beat. Exhibit B: Brother Neil Bush
recently went to Saudi Arabia to offer advice. "The U.S. media campaign
against the interests of Arabs and Muslims and the American public opinion
on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be influenced through a sustained
lobbying and P.R. effort," he reportedly said.

The presidential privacy zone has at times extended to Fleischer's family,
too. When a Washington Post story noted that Fleischer's mother had
expressed the hope that her son would marry, Fleischer called the reporter
to say: "Leave my mother out of it."