Posted on 02/27/2005 7:50:54 AM PST by rface
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.....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.
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Joe Conason is the author of The Hunting of the President:The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Please verify the claims about Bush's cocaine use you've made in this thread.
He hasn't denied being a pedophile.
What is he afraid of?
Ah yes, another "benefit" of how Americans are propagandized about drugs: the popular image of all addicts as disfunctional.
Dubya, like most people who overdo it, realized he was headed for trouble and quit drinking and, I think one can assume, all other intoxicating substances.
But if that were widely known, it might put a kink in the plans of the quacks that run marijuana "rehab" clinics.
We are reaping the results of a decade of hardline regarding prisoners. These things are cyclical. Some times we are very easy and others hard. The reality that 97+% of all prisoners will get out should put the onus on the system to provide them the opportunity to come out better than when they went in. Not only do many states not advocate this, it is a very difficult thing to do with budget constraints and the laisse faire attitude of the public toward what goes on inside.
Joe Conason.... LOL! Haven't seen him around for awhile.
It's no surprise that some paper in Canada still publishes that guy's raving bitterness.
He's Molly Ivins.... without the clever subtlety, LMAO.
You're free to not believe it. There used to be threads here about it in early 2000. I once did a search for Bush and cocaine. Many Mena references and a couple about W. Have fun.
I stand by my direct hearing of the statement and the direct quote from W on an NBC news interview.
This kind of article is meaningless. It is too late for this campaign rhetoric to influence the election, so it is no more than outdated and useless ghosts of old polemics. Those who practice polemics past their point of utility are themselves past their point of utility to society and may constitute a danger to themselves and their neighborhood.
I did read your post 72. Where is the direct quote from Bush's campaign?
I did not remember the exact words to put them in quotes. It was December 1999. The statement said that Mr. Bush had not used hard drugs in the last 25 years. That's ALMOST word for word, but Imay not have it precisely. Then in January, 2000 W said he stood by the statement and would not address it anymore.
Well, maybe all prisons should become Federal prisons then and should be outsourced to the states to run under Federal guidelines. I know, I know. Just another thing for Big Brother to get into. However, I believe that it makes sense to have them run within the same guidelines with rehabilitation as the goal. It would save a lot of money and, hopefully, salvage a lot of lives.
The President is not "punishing" drug users; they are being punished under the laws of the jurisdiction in which they were convicted.
Rumor is when Bush was campaigning here in Iowa during his first run; his car was speeding one time. The word is that the car was going 68 in a 65 zone.
It was never in the media, had to be cover up by moneyed Republican interests to keep it out of sight.
:)
Good one!
Red6
You didn't ask me; but, yes, I have. The last time, the officer let me go. That was very sweet of him. :) I have tried very, very hard since then to take it easy on the accelerator.
You can't link to it... if it was said it'd be very easy to link to wouldn't it?
In general I don't see the public as interested in prisons. Mostly the attitude is "just don't let them escape). Only the most farsighted talk about what they'll be like when they are released. I'll give it 5 minutes before someone relies, then don't release them.
Hey that's a pretty good rumor.
BTW, I've also heard Conason is a Transvestite. I too have no proof, but that's 'the word on the street'.
:-)
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