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.
Is this is all that Conason is buiding his case on?
I don't wear a mask - and I don't know if there's more "dirt" on the tapes....but to be honest - experementing with coke wouldn't change my impression of Pres. Bush. You have ways here to check into "political correctness" quotent.
Bush had a drinking problem.....so what!
Bush smoke pot....maybe. So what.
Bush tried coke -- maybe -- but a dangerous experiment, but I think his head is on straight.
I make incorrect judgements on people and other FReepers way too often -- oh well - it looks like you do too.
The rumors were that he used it a Camp David when his father was President..a difference..right?
Parole officers do check for the presence of illegal controlled substances in parolees, but if a parolee wants to use, he will. If he wants to quit, he will.
I don't know if he did it and I don't care, hasn't Joe ever heard of repentence? How can you possible hold it against someone for something stupid that they may have done in youth, haven't we all done something stupid?
I don't know if he did it and I don't care, hasn't Joe ever heard of repentence? How can you possible hold it against someone for something stupid that they may have done in youth, haven't we all done something stupid?
I don't know when or where, they just said in the last 25 years. That would have been in his "youthful mistake" years and before his father's presidency. I don't put stock in rumors, but I remember these statements by his staff and himself during the early days of the campaign.
PS, I'm opposed on principle to jailers who commit the same crimes as their charges.
sometimes I will yank a chain or two just to watch the reaction. This can be a dangerous and distructive hobby, but I wasn't trying to yank a chain here - I was just addressing an issue, in what I thought was, in an open way.
HA!!
...OK, whatever.
Joe Conason is one bitter loser eh?. What a superficial hack. Must suck to be him.
Pretty high bar there. Hell, if you can prove "intent to distribute" beyond a reasonable doubt, then charge the guy with distibution.
If a guy has a distribution amount and is in a place where he can distibute it (on a street corner, in a parking lot, etc.) as opposed to in his living room or basement, then it sure looks like intent to distribute to me. Let's not play games, here.
I'm comfortable with four categories: possession (of a personal use amount), possession (of a distibution amount - no intent to distribute), possession (of a distibution amount - intent to distribute), distribution.
No, Conason does NOT have a valid point, because he failed to write this column during the eight years of the Clinton "presidency". EVERYONE knows that Clinton did drugs. Only the American Left "knows" that "Bush did cocaine". Writing this column during the Clinton regime could have made a difference for the "unjustly incarcerated". Since he failed to write it then, this column is merely for political points, just like a "growing numbers of homeless" column.
Conason is a joke.
Do you understand my point?
Joe Conason beats up little old ladies and steals their aspirin. Everyone knows it whether he admits it or not.
He also dances around his living room in bra and garter belt singing show tunes with the drapes open. My brothers pool boy's sister's hair dresser's garbage man's son's teacher's knows somebody who saw him.
Considering the fact that BIll CLinton's own brother, while being secretly recorded, said that Bill had a nose like a "vacuum cleaner" in regards to Cocaine use, Conason's outrage is a bit ridiculous, don't you think?
" Do you understand my point?"
No, even a lier tells the truth sometimes...
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