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Let me help you with some of this. Being on SCOTUS 30 years after being a party animal in college, is different than flying a jet as a young man, having indulged as a young man. Gephardt back when was sort of apolgetic about his clean living ways, when the subject came up. In any event, the point is that the comment that this could in any way be a skeleton is ludicrous. If it were made an issue of, there would be a huge backlash.

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Let me help you with some of this. Being on SCOTUS 30 years after being a party animal in college, is different than flying a jet as a young man, having indulged as a young man. Gephardt back when was sort of apolgetic about his clean living ways, when the subject came up. In any event, the point is that the comment that this could in any way be a skeleton is ludicrous. If it were made an issue of, there would be a huge backlash.
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Oh, heavens. I did not realize you do not know of this. Best you Google Douglas Ginsberg. USSC nominee by Ronald Reagan. Withdrew from consideration after admitting to smoking pot.

I admire the way the President handled the press when they tried to hold his carousing days against him, telling them it was essentially old news, from an old life, not a topic for discussion in the here and now.

I disagree, though, with much of PD's initial analysis, regardless of whatever insider information he might possess. Any attempt by the Democrats to drag out mummified skeletons from tiny little closets would be sure to backfire. Imagine the sheer, dark, laughable irony of a notorious drunk like Ted Kennedy attempting to nail a SCOTUS candidate on a profligate youth.

As for me, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, would to God I had never touched the stuff in the first place, but then, I wouldn't be who I am now. For some of us, that kind of self-inflicted pain and misery was the anvil upon which we were pounded in order to shape us into reasonably decent human beings. Could someone use the things I did back then against me if I ran for, say, school board or county council? Sure they could. Would it work? Probably not. Everything I've done since those days has been an attempt to right the balance, and most folks who know me know this. The same would hold true for someone shooting for high office, I think. Americans believe in things like personal change and redemption, and a God who makes such change and redemption possible (and believable).