It's about character, stupid

Why the public needs to know whether, when and why George W. Bush used drugs.

By Fred Branfman

Aug 31, 1999 | James Carville has emerged as a kind of courtier not only to President Clinton, but to the institution of the presidency itself, with his recent Time magazine attack on the press for asking questions about George W. Bush's alleged cocaine use. His advice to Bush -- that he should ask reporters "What is there about no that you don't understand?" -- bespeaks a common attitude among courtiers and other sycophants to the powerful: that a leader's "private life" should remain private, that the press should collude in keeping it that way and that the only legitimate questions have to do with public policy.

Even more respected figures like presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin have begun saying that there is a need to restore the "dignity" of the presidency by reducing media intrusion into the president's private life.

This attitude is highly unfortunate, for it seeks to reverse President Clinton's most historic and lasting accomplishment: his demystification of the presidency. While inadvertent to be sure, Clinton has performed an invaluable public service in showing Americans that our president is a real person with weaknesses like anyone else. Confronted with the evidence, Americans decided that his weaknesses did not outweigh his strengths, and overwhelmingly opposed impeachment.

The president is different from all of our other politicians. He or she alone still carries a kind of mystique, as a carry-over from the days of monarchy and rulers holding both secular and sacred power. Americans defer to the president more than anyone else in our society.

Presidents, of course, have historically misused this deference. Clearly the president's traditional hold on the public psyche has done great harm -- from Vietnam to Watergate to Iran-Contra -- and has no place in a democracy. Given our innate tendency to project our desires for protection onto the president, the media and public should demand more information, not less, from our presidential candidates in coming years.

The most important reason for reducing the "zone of privacy" around the president is simple: He or she is the only person to whom we give the unilateral power to blow up ourselves and everyone else on earth, and to send our young people into combat, and we ought to know as much as we can about the person to whom we entrust such formidable power.

In return for being granted the power to murder and maim at will, as well as the perks of lifelong wealth and fame, ordinary politicians running for president should expect to share everything about their personal lives that will enable us to judge their character. No one forces anyone to run for president. But if they wish to seek the power to destroy life on earth, they should have no secrets from the rest of us.

In the old days, this was impractical, for the public was even more hypocritical than leaders and the press. In a world -- the mid 1960s -- in which Nelson Rockefeller could be blackballed from the presidency for a divorce, even though adultery was rampant and divorces already skyrocketing, there was perhaps a case for allowing the president his secrets.

Today, however, the public is more sophisticated than the media and politicians combined. As Monicagate showed, they are capable of analyzing and weighing the importance of personal information far better than those conveying it to them.

Next Page: What did he use, and when did he use it?

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