Is Nothing Private?

By John F. Stacks

When it was reported that Senate minority Leader Tom Daschle told a gaggle of Washington reporters he thought George W. Bush had the right to refuse to answer questions about his long-past personal behavior, including inquiries about whether he ever used cocaine, the cheers went up. "Right, just leave him alone. Who cares what he did when he was young?" Or, from the Governor's boomer cohort: "Who didn't try drugs back then?"

It's easy to understand the forgiving impulse of the Governor's contemporaries, who themselves don't want to be permanently disqualified. And it's not hard to comprehend a national disinclination, post-Monica, to paw over the dark moments of yet another politician's life. The problem is that using cocaine, unlike having a bit of sport with the ladies, is illegal, and the country has decided to dole out harsh prison sentences to many people caught with the drug.

America survived and prospered for a couple of centuries without knowing absolutely everything about its Presidents. Full disclosure was prevented both by the discretion of the perpetrators and by a fairly rigid sense of restraint on the part of the Establishment press. For example, when James B. ("Scotty") Reston, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, found out that one of his reporters was looking into rumors that John Kennedy had been married to another woman before Jackie, he stopped the investigation. Said Reston: "I will not have the New York Times muckraking the President of the United States."

Before Washington journalism turned into blood sport and politics turned into an exercise in serial lying, there was a fairly firm understanding by the press that personal failings were none of the public's business unless misbehavior affected the performance of public duties. Because there was so little competition, the press barons could enforce those rules. No more.

Yet there is a national longing to return to the good old days when political news was more about issues and policies, and less about private lives. Could there be a set of guidelines governing both press coverage and the terms of political engagement? How about a statute of limitations for past misdeeds? Maybe any act committed before the age of majority should be off limits. Or could misbehavior that violates no laws and harms no other person be declared out of bounds for scrutiny?

This all sounds reasonable enough, but it's hard to imagine that some parts of the press wouldn't continue to ask the questions and that some parts of the media wouldn't rush to report the answers, believable or not. Soon it would be everywhere. The rationale for probing has only grown easier in this post-ideological period, since so many politicians are essentially saying "Elect me because I'm the better person." Is there not then a compelling need to know just how good a person that politician is? Is he or she a hypocrite?

Which brings us back to George W. Bush. Surely few care that he may have had a wild youth, if that means he dated many women or drank too much from time to time. But what about the illegal use of cocaine? Tens of thousands of Americans are serving mandatory jail sentences for having been caught with cocaine or its variant, crack. If Bush did try cocaine, how does that square with his support of Texas legislation putting those caught with less than a gram of the drug in jail?

A young man asked Bush during a campaign event in Iowa recently whether the candidate had used cocaine. Bush said he wasn't answering that sort of question. The questioner then asked whether candidates should be disqualified if such use occurred. Bush said no, "if they've learned their lesson." O.K., but what about the people in jail who may have learned their lessons?

There may be only two practical ways to deal with the question of privacy for candidates, and neither relies on the self-restraint of the press, since that is a forlorn hope. The first is the "let it all hang out" approach, in which the candidate answers every question, truthfully, and relies on the good sense of the people to weigh the importance of what is disclosed. There is good reason to believe, post-Clinton, that we have arrived at a time in which the public can sort out what's important and what is merely embarrassing. Do most candidates have that sort of trust in the American people? Bill Clinton certainly didn't, devising an impressively precise series of half-admissions that allowed him to get elected twice.

The second approach is to say nothing about the sins of the past, and to let the public decide whether the stonewall is covering up some egregious mistake or is rather a healthy assertion of political privacy. This seems to be George W. Bush's current strategy, at least on this question. He has been quick to deny any marital infidelity and to admit earlier excessive drinking. It might be nice to think that a politician can decide where to draw the line on political privacy, but Bush is being naive if he thinks his silence will stop the questions.